Hometown Wedding

“At least you’ll have a vacation from your job.”

“Not really. That heavy briefcase you put in the back is full of manuscripts to read and edit.”

“Hey, you’re an editor?” Nicole, who’d been hanging out the window like a happy Labrador retriever, popped her head back into the cab. “That’s cool. Do you work with any kickin’ writers, like Stephen King?”

“I’m afraid not. Parnell is an educational textbook company. Compared to Stephen King, most of the stuff I work on is pretty dry.”

“Textbooks! Yuck!” Nicole twisted back toward the open window to wave at the blond male driver of a red Corvette. Travis ground his teeth, biting back the temptation to lecture her. Nicole was just keyed up from the trip, that was all. She would settle down fine after a day or two on the ranch. Then everything would be just like old times.

Eden was gazing past him now, toward the rugged Wasatch Mountains that jutted between the city and the eastern sky. “I noticed traces of hay in the back of the truck,” she ventured. “Does that mean you’re working the old family ranch?”

Travis forced a sidelong grin. “You have been away a long time,” he said. “I moved back to the ranch when I finished college. Been there ever since.”

“Ranching.” Eden fidgeted with her nails. “Somehow I always imagined you in a more glamorous role, like a sportscaster, or an FBI agent, or a male super model.”

“Oh, nothing of the sort. Running that ranch is all I ever wanted to do.” Travis edged the truck around the small Pontiac, striving to ignore the womanly warmth of Eden’s leg and the sensually whispered message of her perfume. Edna Rae Harper. He rolled the name in his mind as he took a deep breath and continued speaking.

“My dad barely made enough on the place to keep the family fed. The land’s too dry and rocky for most crops. Even the few cows he kept were poor milkers. But ten years ago, I started raising quarter horses. The horses do fine with extra hay and oats, and since I mortgaged the place to pick up a champion stud, the colts have been bringing decent money in Vegas and L.A.”

“You sound like a satisfied man.” She settled back into the seat beside him, the hot wind bannering her spun-honey hair.

“Satisfied?” Travis let the question hang on the air. If “satisfied” meant coming home to an empty house and eating supper alone, then drifting into solitary slumber in the big brass bed where his parents had conceived five children…

“Uh-huh,” he nodded, feigning smugness, “you might say I’ve done all right by the old place.”

“It sounds as if you have no plans to leave.” Eden stirred, her breast brushing his sleeve with the impact of a rocket burst.

“Leave?” Travis’s attempted chuckle came out sounding hollow. “My grandpa bought that land west of town when he came home from the First World War. My dad spent his whole life there, battling rocks and tumbleweeds to grub out a livelihood. He and Mom raised five kids before they passed on. I was the baby of the family—but then, I guess you know all that.

“Over the years, as I watched my brothers and sisters spread their wings, I promised myself that after I got my education, I’d come back and take care of the ranch, maybe even make something fine of it one day.”

He paused for breath. He’d been talking too much, he realized. Probably making a bore of himself. What was wrong with him today, anyway? With the women he occasionally dated, he was never at a loss for clever flattering things to say. But in the thirty-odd minutes he’d spent with Eden Harper, he’d done little more than talk about himself. He’d already unloaded a good chunk of his life in her lap. If he didn’t stop soon—

“Hey!” he announced, seizing the moment. “I see a Circle K sign just past that off-ramp. Anybody for sodas?”

“Me!” Nicole jerked her head back inside the cab. “I’ll have an extra-large Diet Coke. And can I have some Cheetos, too? And a Milky Way?”

“Sure.” Travis pulled into the exit lane, grateful that at least one thing about Nicole—her appetite—hadn’t changed. “What’s your pleasure, Eden?”

“Uh…iced tea. Plain. And thank you.”

“You won’t get much nourishment out of that. Sure I can’t get you a hot dog or something?”

“I had lunch on the plane. Tea will be fine.”

“Hey, Eden!” Nicole grinned. “I think your hiccups are gone!”

“Oh…” Eden blinked, then, as if on cue, emitted a lusty hic. Her cheeks flushed appealingly as she shrugged, then laughed, shaking her wind-tangled hair. She looked damned sexy, Travis observed. And he knew some very interesting cures for the hiccups. The thought flashed through his mind that, under different circumstances, he wouldn’t mind trying some of them on her.

But this was crazy, he reminded himself with a sharp mental slap. People in small towns had memories like elephants. Take up with Edna Rae Harper, and the whole idiotic scandal would come crashing down on their heads again.

Forcing his mind back to the present, he swung the truck into the parking lot. “Hold down the fort, ladies. I’ll be right back,” he said, swinging out of the cab. “Let’s see-extra-large Diet Coke, Chee-tos, a Milky Way and one plain iced tea. Right?”

“Right,” said Nicole. “And a pack of Big Red.”

“Got it.” Travis clicked shut the door of the truck and strode into the convenience store. He hadn’t decided what to get for himself, except that it would need to be large, wet and cold.

Damned cold.

“Did you really go to school with my dad? Wow, it must have been a long time ago!”

Thanks a lot, kid! Eden squirmed under Nicole’s open scrutiny, feeling like a frog on a dissecting table. Travis had been gone about twenty seconds, and she was already getting the third degree.

“Longer than your whole lifetime,” she answered pleasantly. “Your father graduated two years before I did.”

“And did you think my dad was hot?”

“Nicole…” Eden’s cheeks blazed like neon.

“A lot of girls do, you know. Even now that he’s so old. And the women in town—God, you should see them!”

“Don’t swear, Nicole. Your father wouldn’t like it.”

“But you wouldn’t believe them! Calling him on the phone! Bringing him pies and brownies and chicken casseroles! Inviting him over for supper, and who knows what else! He could marry any one of them in a minute. But he won’t. Want to know why?”

“That really isn’t any of my business,” Eden forced herself to say.

Nicole ran a hand through her gamine thatch of dark brown curls. “Want to know?”

“Nicole—” Eden’s protest ended in another hiccup. “All right. Why?”

“Because he’s still in love with my mom, that’s why. After all these years, he’s never gotten over her. That’s why he hasn’t found anybody else.” Nicole studied her pert reflection in the side mirror. “So, you didn’t answer my question. When you were in high school, did you think my dad was hot?”

Eden exhaled in defeat. “All the girls thought so. I guess I did, too.”

Nicole leaned closer to the mirror, squinting at an imaginary blemish. “Know what a girl in his high school did? She wrote this mash letter to my dad in her notebook. Real X-rated stuff, from what I heard. Some boy found the letter and passed out copies with the school paper. Poor Daddy was embarrassed to death, and I guess it just about ruined his reputation for good.”

Eden had gone cold in the stifling heat of the cab. “Where,” she managed to ask, “did you ever hear such a story?”

“From Kim Driscoll. Last summer. Kim said the girl’s name was Agnes or something, and that she was a real nerd. She left town after graduation and never came back. Did you know her, Eden?”

Eden shook her head in feeble denial, casting urgent glances past the gas pumps to the entrance of the Circle K, where Travis had just stepped outside.

“Run and help your father, Nicole,” she said. “He looks as if he might be about to drop those big drinks.”

“Right!” Travis’s daughter flashed out of the truck to bound across the asphalt in the swimming heat. Eden sagged limply against the upholstery, her silk blouse clinging to her skin. Her stomach clenched as she faced the reality of going home to the place where people still talked about Edna Rae Harper.

How could she do it? After what her ridiculous teenage fantasizing had done to Travis, how could she show her face in town again?

Worse, how could she avoid it?

On her other rare visits to Monroe, she had simply stayed out of sight. This time, Eden realized, hiding would not be an option. There would be shopping to do, errands to run, callers to greet. For the period of her mother’s recovery, she would have no choice except to deal with people who hadn’t seen her in years, but who still remembered the scandal and, evidently, still talked about it.

She would rise to the challenge, Eden resolved grimly. She would smile and hold her head high, as if the disgrace had never happened. Her conduct would be above reproach; and that would include keeping a wide country mile between herself and Travis Conroy.

That part, Eden assured herself, would be easy. After this miserable trip, Travis would never want to see her again, and the sentiment was mutual. The cookie-and-casserole crowd could have him—that is, if any of them could lure him away from the memory of his ex-wife.

“Your tea, milady.”

Eden’s eyes fluttered open as something cold and wet slid along her cheek. She had dozed off, she suddenly realized. And Travis was beside her, touching her hot face with the chilled, glistening bottle of iced tea.

“Feel good?” He met her startled gaze with a grin as the glassy coolness slipped dreamily down the curve of her throat, to pause at the neckline of her damp silk blouse. Eden’s eyelids floated shut, then jerked open again.

“Give me that!” Flustered and confused, she snatched the bottle out of his hand. “Wh-where’s Nicole?”

“Inside, buying the toothbrush she forgot to pack.” He swung into the seat beside her, balancing a bucket-size colddrink cup in his left hand. “Sorry it’s so hot in here. My next truck will have air-conditioning, I promise.”

“If my memory doesn’t fail me, there’s a Ford dealership off the next exit.”

“Very funny.” He tossed Nicole’s snacks onto her seat, then leaned back and took a long pull on his straw. “You’re all right, Eden Harper. You’ve got class.”

Eden forced her hazy mind to generate a response. “More class than Edna Rae?”

A shadow flickered across his face, then swiftly vanished. “Edna Rae had class, too,” he said. “She just didn’t know it.” Without asking, he reclaimed her iced-tea bottle and twisted off the lid. “Here, drink up. It’ll help cool you off.”

Accepting the tea, Eden tilted back her head and let its lovely brisk coldness trickle down her throat. She’d gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a cab to La Guardia for the flight west. She was sweaty and exhausted. Her clothes were glued to her body, her hair was a windblown mess, and the aspirin she’d taken earlier hadn’t even made a dent in her headache.

But at least, she realized, her hiccups had stopped.

She cradled the icy bottle between her palms, painfully conscious of Travis’s presence beside her. Striving for an air of cool detachment, she raised the bottle to her lips and took a deep swallow. The tea went down her windpipe. She coughed and sputtered, wishing passionately that she could just melt into the floorboard and disappear.

“Hey, are you okay?” The edge in Travis’s voice could have been either concern or amusement.

She nodded, struggling against the cough reflex. “I’m…fine. It’s just…Edna Rae, coming back to…haunt me.”

Again, that odd dark shadow flickered across his face. “Eden, you don’t have to—”

He broke off as Nicole came bounding into sight, waving the toothbrush she’d bought. Eden felt a prickle of relief. Forget the past, she told herself. Forget it all. That was the only sensible thing to do.

Nicole popped into the cab and slammed the door hard. Her free hand darted to the radio, flipped on the power switch and punched the select buttons till the heavy-metal beat of a local rock station blared out of the speakers.

“Okay, Daddy?” she shouted over the volume.

“Eden?” Travis shot her a questioning glance.

“Fine.” Eden slumped into the seat cushions, her head throbbing in rhythm with the beat. She’d long since outgrown her taste for hard rock, but at least with the music blasting, she wouldn’t be expected to carry on a conversation.

“Seat belts, ladies!” Travis swung the truck out of the parking lot and back toward the freeway. Eden complied groggily as the long day’s fatigue caught up with her. The traffic, the billboards and the gray-green June landscape swam and blurred in her vision. Even Nicole’s radio music dimmed as her eyelids grew heavier…

Travis exhaled as the weight of Eden’s head plopped against his shoulder. Take it easy, he cautioned himself as he worked his hand between her linen-clad knees to reach the gearshift knob. Just shift your mind into neutral and keep it there until you’ve left this lady where she belongs.

Moving slowly, he put the truck into high gear and cranked the growling engine up to sixty-five for the long drive home. His eyes risked a glance at her sleeping face, even as he battled the temptation to let his gaze drift lower.

No, he reflected darkly, it had not been a smart idea, bringing her along. Over the years, he had managed to distance himself from Edna Rae and the trouble she’d caused him. He had buried her image, freezing it in the past like a photograph in an old high-school yearbook. For a long time now, he had felt safe.

But he could feel safe no longer. Not with Eden’s sleepy weight against his arm. Not with her hair blowing soft and pale against his sleeve and the warm damp sensuality of her fragrance curling in his nostrils.

Edna Rae was back, invading his life with an impact he had never imagined. It was as if some long-barred door inside him had cracked open, and he could not see what was on the other side. He was intrigued, Travis conceded. He was also confused, angry, and plain damned scared.

The only sensible course was to play it cool. Be friendly with the lady. Talk to her. Joke with her as if nothing had happened. Then leave her at her front door and run like a five-point buck.

He had put the past behind him. Nothing—not even a sexy, vulnerable, funny lady with spun-sugar hair—was worth bringing it back.

Chapter Three

The sun cast long fingers of shadow over the scrub-dotted hills as Travis pulled off the freeway at the Scipio cutoff. Nicole’s rock station had faded into static. Nicole had faded with it. She was curled sound asleep against the locked door, the half-empty bag of Chee-tos still clutched in her lap.

He reached out and switched off the radio, welcoming the silence. Eden stirred against his shoulder, whimpered like a dreaming pup and settled back into slumber. Her perfume had mellowed, blending with her own musky scent in a mélange that Travis found disturbingly erotic. For a man who savored smell, touch and taste, as well as sight, he reflected, Eden Harper possessed the makings of a sensual banquet.

The day had been long and hot. Travis was tired—too tired to stop his mind from imagining how that banquet would progress. He would start by nuzzling the windblown honey of her hair, then move on to explore the salty involuted shell of her ear with his tongue tip, taking time to nibble his way around to her mango-sweet lips and savor the dark wine-moist secrets of her mouth. Next he would ease up the hem of that luscious peach blouse and ripple his hands slowly over her—

Damn!

What the devil did he think he was doing? This was Edna Rae Harper he was getting so worked up about! Edna Rae, whose unrequited crush had touched off the biggest disaster of his high-school years.

But not, by any means, the biggest disaster of his life.

He had not wanted the divorce. But looking back from a perspective of nine years, he could see that the split with Diane had been inevitable. They had married far too young and become parents before either of them was ready. For Diane, raised in the posh world of Newport Beach, life in a tiny two-room apartment, with no money, a demanding baby and a husband preoccupied with school and work, must have been hell on earth.

A coyote darted out of the junipers and flashed across the road, a gray phantom in the twilight. Travis switched on the headlights and swung his attention back to his driving. There were plenty of deer on this road, not to mention stray cattle. It wouldn’t do to hit something or to swerve off the shoulder of the two-lane highway and roll into the barrow pit. Not with such precious cargo aboard.

His tired eyes gazed ahead of the lights, at the long blue ribbon of road. Things might have worked out differently if he’d done things Diane’s way, he reflected. But when he’d insisted on returning to Monroe and had taken a job at the high school…yes, it was a wonder the marriage had lasted as long as it did. Diane had hated small-town life. She had hated the ranch. Only Nicole had held them together. And in the end, even Nicole hadn’t been enough.

He glanced tenderly over at his daughter where she sprawled in her seat, wrapped in Eden’s jacket, clutching her Chee-tos as she slept. He hadn’t lost her, he reminded himself. She was here. She was his for the whole summer.

And things were bound to be all right between them. For all her grown-up airs, she was still his little girl. She was only fourteen, and she needed her father as much as she had ever needed him in her tender young life.

He would make the most of this summer, Travis promised himself. He would plan his time around being with Nicole, sharing fun, forging bonds of love and trust to last through the long months of separation.

As for Eden Harper, she had given him a turn, but the lady was only passing through. In an hour’s time, he would be unloading her bags in her driveway. If he had any sense, he would bid her a breezy farewell and put her out of his mind for good.

If he had any sense.

Aye, as Hamlet would say, there was the rub.

Eden’s head moved against his shoulder, her silky hair skimming his throat like a breath. The unexpected warmth that trickled through Travis’s body was so sweet that he almost moaned out loud.

No, he conceded, it wasn’t going to be that simple. Drab little Edna Rae Harper had evolved into a delicious woman, as tempting as homemade peach-vanilla ice cream on a hot summer day. The urge to steal a taste would torment him for as long as she was in town. If he allowed himself to weaken…

But he couldn’t afford to think of Eden now. Not while he was warm and muzzy and surrounded by the fragrant cocoon of her nearness. Any decision involving Miss Eden Harper would have to be made at a safe distance, with a cool clear head.

Travis dimmed his running lights as a car swished past in the opposite direction, headed for Scipio and the freeway. The sky was streaked with crimson above the escarpment that rimmed the lonesome little valley. The evening breeze was cool through the open window.

Restless now, he felt Eden’s sleepy weight against his arm and thought of home.

“Rise and shine, city lady.”

“Mmm?” Eden opened her eyes to Travis’s sinfully dimpled smile. His face was a hand’s breath from her own, so close that it startled her. She jerked backward.

He chuckled under his breath. “Wake up, Miss Harper. You’re home.”

“Oh…” She struggled upright as the truck’s dim interior swam into focus, including Nicole, sound asleep on her right.

“For what it’s worth, I came into town by the back road,” Travis whispered. “Nobody saw us. Our reputations remain unsullied.”

“Oh, shush!” Eden was too groggy and uncomfortable for pleasantries. The jab she gave his ribs was only half in jest. “Just get out of my way, and I’ll see if I can slide under the steering wheel and make my exit without disturbing your daughter.”

“Right.” With the engine still idling, he eased open the door of the pickup and dropped lightly to the ground. Eden forced her sleep-numbed body to stir. Sweat had plastered her clothes to her skin. The fabric shifted itchily as she slid across the seat. She did not even want to imagine what her face and hair must look like.

The driver’s seat was warmly indented with the imprint of Travis’s lean buttocks. He stood watching, eyes glinting sardonically as she slid beneath the steering wheel. Outside, it was almost fully dark—about nine-thirty, Eden calculated. She was grateful for the lateness of the hour and the quietness of the street. No one, not even her mother, seemed to have heard the truck pull into the driveway.

“Careful, it’s a long drop to the ground.” His hands reached up to help her out the door. In her groggy disheveled state, Eden wanted no part of him.

“It’s all right, I can make it by myself!” she snapped. And she might have done just that, except for the fact that her leg had gone to sleep somewhere past Yuba Lake. The benumbed foot that groped for a toehold missed the edge entirely. Eden tumbled backward into Travis’s waiting arms.

He caught her deftly by the waist, his strong hands supporting her from behind as he lowered her to the ground. “Easy now.” His voice, husky with amusement, droned in her ear like a big fuzzy bumblebee. “You’d better watch your step, Miss Harper. What will the neighbors think?”

For Eden, it was the last straw.

“Oh, leave me alone!” she muttered, twisting loose and turning to glower up at him. “All right, I admit it. From the first second I saw you at the airport, I’ve done nothing but make a fool of myself. But you don’t have to rub it in. The least you can do is leave me with some…dignity!”

Her voice cracked on the last word as she struggled for self-control. She might have wheeled and stormed into the house, but her luggage, she realized, was still in the back of the pickup.

“You’ve been laughing at me all afternoon!” she fumed. “Klutzy little Edna Rae, always stumbling over her own feet! Well, I’m not Edna Rae anymore! In fact, Edna Rae doesn’t even—”

“May I tell you something?” Travis’s grin had faded, but a hint of cockiness still flickered in the depths of his mahogany eyes.

“Get my suitcases down, please,” Eden retorted icily. “After that I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”

“Anything to please a lady!” He swung toward the back of the truck, caught up Eden’s bags and briefcase, and piled them in the driveway. That done, he stood facing her, his broad-shouldered presence blocking out the almond moon where it floated above the jagged mountain skyline.

“And now will you hear me out?”

“As long as it’s not a lecture.” Eden braced her emotional barricades against his charm. One thing hadn’t changed since high school, she realized with a sinking heart. Travis Conroy still had the power to reduce her to a quivering lump of jelly.

But this time she would not let him do it. She wasn’t a palpitating teenager anymore. She was a grown woman with an independent life. And Travis was no longer her idol. He was a man, nothing more.

“I’m ready,” she said. “So, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Just this.” He caught her hand, trapping it like a bird in the curl of his hard-callused palm. “I know I sort of railroaded you into coming along, but I truly can’t say that I’m sorry. Thanks for being such a good sport. You’re a breath of fresh air, Eden Harper.”

Thrown off balance by his evident sincerity, Eden groped for a fitting reply. But before she could speak, he raised her hand to his lips and skimmed a courtly kiss across her knuckles.

“Good night, sweet princess,” he murmured, his eyes twinkling with rapier-edged humor, “and farewell.”

“Oh…” Eden sputtered, stung by the subtle mockery of his gesture. “Oh, you…”