The Forgotten Cowboy
Autore
Kara Lennox
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15
Chapter One
One week later, Willow pasted on a smile as yet another wedding guest approached the register book. This was much, much harder than she’d anticipated.
“Why, Willow, it’s so good to see you up and around!” The woman was in her fifties, fashionably dressed, slender. The man with her was balding, wore glasses, carried himself with an air of self-importance.
Now, who in Cottonwood fit that description? Only about a zillion people. “I’m feeling much better,” Willow responded, plucking the white-plumed pen from its stand and holding it out. The woman took the hint and signed the book. Willow read the signature upside-down, a skill she was quickly acquiring. The Honorable and Mrs. Milton Chatsworth. Duh! The mayor and his wife. Their daughter, Anne, had been Willow’s favorite babysitter.
“How’s your granddaughter doing?” Willow asked. Anne was now married and the mother of a darling baby daughter.
“Growing like a weed,” the mayor crowed. “Do you want to see pictures?” He reached for his wallet, but his wife, Deborah, stopped him.
“Now, Milton, Willow’s busy. Maybe she can look at the pictures later.” She gave Willow a shoulder-squeeze and the couple moved on.
Willow breathed a sigh of relief as she surreptitiously jotted notes on an index card under the table skirt. Deb. Chatsworth. Teal dress, emerald ring. She’d given up on cataloguing the men. They were all wearing gray suits and navy ties. It was as if they’d called each other last night and arranged to match. But if she could keep the women straight, that might work, since couples tended to stick together. Unfortunately, she had to write down the cues, since her memory was still so spasmodic.
At first, she hadn’t wanted to attend her friend Mick’s wedding. It had sounded like her worst nightmare—a hundred people she knew, all of them with the same face. Then she’d reasoned that if she was going to cure her brain problem, she had to put herself in challenging situations and exercise her gray cells. And so far, so good. No one had even suspected she had a problem.
She turned her attention to the couple approaching her table. Ugh, another man in a gray suit. This one had blond hair and was undoubtedly handsome, though she could only judge that by objectively cataloguing his regular features, blue eyes and square jaw.
Her heart skipped a beat. Oh, please, don’t let it be him. Don’t let it be Cal Chandler. She was in no mood to face him, not when he was with a shapely woman in a snug red dress. Though it was tempting to rub his face in the fact that she was off to medical school in five weeks, despite everything he’d done to wreck her life, she wouldn’t be able to gloat with any sincerity—not when her future was again in doubt.
Just thinking about him started a slow burn in her gut. She’d gotten her life back on track despite the devastating setback she’d suffered five years ago, but she couldn’t say the same about him. He was practically a genius, with a degree in biomedical science. But he’d blown off vet school after one year and was now wasting his life as a casual laborer on a ranch. Not that it wasn’t good, honest work, but with Cal’s potential—
“Willow,” the woman in the red dress said with a warm smile as she signed the book. “I didn’t expect to see you here. You look a little flushed—are you okay?”
Willow glanced at the signature and sighed with quiet relief. This handsome blond man was Jeff Hardison, her grandmother’s doctor, and his wife, Allison, Cottonwood’s dentist. She was spared Cal for the moment.
Willow summoned a smile. “I’m feeling great.”
“Are you sure? I could bring you some punch.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” Willow said reassuringly. “It’s just a little warm in here.” Or maybe it was just her. It burned her up just thinking about all the opportunities Cal had tossed away while she’d toiled through college working three jobs—
Okay, she had to stop thinking about him or she was going to embarrass herself.
“It’s good to see you,” Jeff said, sincerity tingeing his voice. “You had the whole town worried for a few days.”
“I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine now.”
As the Hardisons walked away, Willow realized her grandmother was standing beside her. Pathetically, she only knew it was Nana because she recognized her gaudy rhinestone brooch.
“Any problems?” her grandmother asked in a stage whisper. “You know, recognizing people?”
“I’ve got a pretty good system going.” Willow showed Nana her stack of index cards with their hastily written hints. “No one suspects a thing.”
“I don’t know why you don’t want anyone to know,” Nana said. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Nana, think about it. Do you want the whole town to think I’m brain-damaged? Even once I make a full recovery, that’s a label that could stick with me and ruin my life.”
Nana clucked like a fussy hen. “You worry too much about things ‘ruining your life.’”
Willow knew her grandmother was referring to more than the recent accident. She’d always thought Willow had overdramatized the humiliating incident that had turned her parents against her and changed the course of her life, that she’d been too quick to thrust all the blame on Cal. Okay, so it wasn’t all his fault. No one had held a gun to her head and forced her to take her clothes off and have sex with Cal. But she’d loved Cal so fiercely, and had been so afraid of losing him, she might as well have had a gun to her head when he’d taken her virginity.
“He’s here, you know,” Nana said quietly.
Willow didn’t have to clarify to whom Nana was referring. Her blood pressure ratcheted up a knot. “He is? Where is he? What’s he wearing? Wait, let me guess. A gray suit?”
“Why, yes. How did you know that?”
Willow smiled despite herself. “Statistical analysis. Nana, how will I know him so I can avoid him?”
“Don’t worry. I think he’s avoiding you. He didn’t sign the guest book, after all. But just in case, he’s wearing a red carnation in his lapel.”
“All right. That should be easy enough to spot. Um, Nana, is he here with anyone?”
“You mean, a date?”
Willow nodded, shame washing through her that she even cared. She shouldn’t.
“I didn’t notice any particular girls with him.”
“I wish he’d just get married,” Willow mumbled. Then maybe she could really forget him and move on.
“He still pines after you, you know.”
Willow thrust out her jaw. “Let him pine.” As if he really would. He probably had a line of women following him around.
“To err is human,” Nana said. “To forgive, divine.”
Willow had no snappy comeback for that one. “I know I should forgive him,” she said softly. “It’s wrong to carry a grudge. Sometimes I pray that I’ll find the grace to walk up to him and say, ‘Cal, I forgive you.’ But I can hardly imagine it, let alone do it.”
Nana clucked again. “Keep trying. You can’t hate a man forever simply because he loved you too much.”
Willow snorted. “He didn’t love me. He was horny and he ruined my life.”
“You know he loved you,” Nana scolded. “Still does.”
NANA’S WORDS echoed in Willow’s head as she watched her friend Mick exchange vows with Tonya Green. Willow and Mick had been friends since high school. They’d even dated for a few months, B.C. Before Cal. But pretty soon they’d both realized they weren’t happy as boyfriend and girlfriend, and they’d gone back to being platonic pals. She’d hung out with him a lot when Cal went away to college, after her freshman year.
Cal had been jealous, she recalled, though there was no reason for him to be.
Mick had struggled in recent years, trying to find himself. He’d dated literally dozens of girls while he sporadically took classes at the junior college. Then he’d gotten Tonya pregnant and, after a brief freak-out, he’d abruptly grown up.
Willow had been riding in Mick’s car the day of the tornado. He’d been hashing things out with her, using her as a sounding board as he tried to come to terms with the big changes in his life. Then the storm had sent his car crashing off a bridge and into the swollen Coombes Creek.
Unlike Willow, Mick hadn’t suffered any serious injuries, but the accident had forced him to set new priorities. Now he was looking forward to his new family life. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him so happy.
As she moved through the reception line a little later, Nana walked behind her and whispered names into her ear.
“You know that one’s Tonya, right?” Nana said.
“The frilly white dress and veil tipped me off.” She gave Tonya a hug, then Mick.
“I finally know what you’ve been talking about all these years,” Mick said.
“What?”
“You said I would know when I found my passion, that there wouldn’t be any doubt. You were right. I’m where I’m supposed to be now.”
Willow squeezed Mick’s hand. “How’s Amanda taking it?” Amanda was Mick’s older sister, who’d been taking care of him since their mother died years ago. She’d been frustrated with his lack of direction, and downright distraught when she’d found out about Tonya’s pregnancy.
“Amanda is delirious she’s getting rid of me.”
“Hey, I heard that,” said the platinum blonde in a pale blue bridesmaid’s dress, standing next to Mick. Identifying her was easy—no one else had hair that color. Amanda smiled and addressed Willow. “I’m going to miss him, strange as that may sound. Willow, you look great.”
“I’ll second that.” A dark-haired man with a chiseled face stood next to Amanda, a possessive arm around her waist. He could be none other than Dr. Hudson Stack, one of the rescue workers who had pulled Willow from the submerged car. “A whole lot better than when I helped load you into the ambulance. You must have remarkable recuperative powers.”
“I had good doctors,” Willow said humbly. “Thank you again, Dr. Stack, for what you did.”
“Call me Hudson, please. And this must be the lovely Clea Marsden.”
Willow could certainly see what Amanda saw in Dr. Stack. Handsome, brave and charming. On vacation from his demanding job in Boston, he’d rented the lake house next door to Amanda. He’d fallen so hard for his neighbor that he’d returned to Boston just long enough to tender his resignation and put his house on the market.
The rest of the wedding reception passed in a blur. Willow sat at a table in the gussied-up VFW hall, her cheat sheets hidden under her purse and her grandmother there for backup, and she continued to put on a good show. She had a few panicked moments when “strangers” approached and she couldn’t place them, but she was always able to gloss over the fact that their names weren’t on the tip of her tongue.
When she wasn’t busy studying clothes and jewelry and hair color, she kept tabs on a certain man in a gray suit with a red carnation in his lapel. She couldn’t help noticing that he was dancing up a storm. A regular social butterfly. But he seemed to be avoiding her corner of the room, and that was all she cared about.
SHERRY HARDISON could cut a mean jitterbug, Cal Chandler thought as he twirled her across one of his hips, then the other, her gauzy skirt flying so high she almost showed her panties. Sherry was his boss’s new wife, a fun-loving party girl with a mop of blond curls and a dazzling smile. A nurse from Dallas, she’d come to Cottonwood last fall to take care of Jonathan when he’d broken his leg. She’d had a hard time fitting in at first, but soon everyone was able to see beyond her fancy clothes and her fast sports car to the truly kind, gentle person she was. She and Jon had married at Christmas, as soon as he could walk down the aisle under his own power, and all the ranch employees were crazy about her. She brought them lemonade on hot days and remembered their birthdays and their kids’ birthdays.
And, boy, could she dance. Cal had learned to dance in college, when he and all his dateless buddies hung out at the C&W bars and took swing lessons from curvaceous instructors wearing tight denim just so they could hold a pretty girl in their arms. He seldom got to show off his skills with a partner this good.
But as fun and nice and pretty as Sherry was, there was someone else he would rather be dancing with.
“Why don’t you just ask her, instead of staring at her like a scolded puppy?” Sherry asked.
Cal groaned. “Is it that obvious?”
“Like an elephant having an allergy fit.”
“I can’t ask her. She would freeze me solid with one look.”
“You two have a history, I take it?”
Since Sherry was relatively new in town, she wouldn’t know all the ancient history. “We dated for almost four years, when she was still in high school.”
“Your first love.”
His only.
“What went wrong?” Sherry asked in her forthright way. Not nosy, just concerned. She was always trying to help people.
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. It’s too embarrassing. But just ask around. Almost everybody knows about it.”
“Now I’m intrigued.”
Shoot, she was going to find out anyway. “Her parents caught us in, shall we say, a compromising position?”
He could tell Sherry was trying not to laugh. “And that’s why you broke up?”
“Believe me, it was no laughing matter. Her folks went ballistic. She was supposed to go off to college in the fall—Stanford. But after ‘the incident,’ as it was referred to, they didn’t let her go. They thought she would ‘go wild’ way out there in California.”
Sherry looked confused. “Did she need their permission?”
“She needed them to pay for it. Stanford’s not cheap. Willow didn’t have the funds to do it without their help. She had to live at home and go to junior college for a couple of years.”
The song ended, and by silent, mutual agreement Sherry and Cal headed for the refreshment table. “And that’s why you broke up?” Sherry asked as Cal filled a cup with punch for her.
“I ruined her life.”
“Oh, and I suppose she had nothing to do with it?” Sherry scoffed.
“Well.” This was the part Cal hated to admit. “It was my fault. I sort of pressured her into it. She wasn’t ready, but I was older and I’d waited all this time for her to grow up, and I was facing the prospect of her running off to California, half a country away—”
“And you wanted to bond with her more closely.”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t believe he was talking to his boss’s wife about sex, but Sherry was really easy to talk to.
Jonathan sauntered over, putting an end to the conversation. “You gonna monopolize my wife all night, Chandler?”
Sometimes, Cal couldn’t tell if Jonathan was kidding or not. He’d always been kind of serious, though Sherry’s freewheeling style had loosened him up quite a bit.
Sherry just punched Jonathan in the arm. “Why would you care? You don’t dance. And this young man…” She plucked the red carnation from Cal’s buttonhole. “…can dance.” Then she stuck the flower between her teeth and struck a flamenco dancer’s pose.
Jonathan grinned and took his wife’s arm. “Come on, Sherrita, I’ll show you some dancing.” As he dragged her off, Sherry looked at Cal and nodded toward Willow, as if to say, Ask her.
Well, hell, why not? What was the worst that could happen? Willow wouldn’t make a scene, not at her friend’s wedding.
WILLOW DRAINED the last of her punch from the glass and checked her watch. She was getting tired. Ever since her hospital stay, she had almost no stamina. But her grandmother was having a good time, dancing with the bride’s grandfather, and Willow didn’t want to be a wet blanket.
A shadow fell across the table. Willow looked up, and her breath caught in her throat. A handsome, tanned man with sun-streaked hair stood before her, somber-faced. Uh-oh, no woman to anchor him to. And he wore the ubiquitous gray suit, though his broad shoulders filled it out much better than the average man.
Momentarily panicked, her gaze darted to his lapel. Thank goodness, no red carnation. She’d thought she was in trouble there for a minute. Still, she had no clue who this man was—only that he made her palms damp and her mouth dry.
Whoa. Get a grip, there, Willomena.
He flashed a dazzling smile, and Willow’s heartbeat accelerated to hyperspeed. “Hi, Willow.”
“H-hello.” How could she not remember a guy as appealing as this? He had a rugged outdoorsy-ness about him that made her think of sunshine and fresh air—and a few less innocent thoughts, as well.
“It’s good to see you. I heard about your accident.”
“It’s nice to see you, too.” Whoever you are. “I’m fine now. Except for the black eye.” She reached up and touched her discolored eye self-consciously. Almost two weeks since the accident, the bright purple bruises had faded to green and yellow, which she’d mostly disguised with makeup. But her cover-up job wasn’t perfect.
“I think you look beautiful.”
Ohh, a flatterer. She’d better be careful with this one. She resisted the urge to flirt back. What if he was married? The husband of a good friend?
Could he be Jeff Hardison? Handsome, blond…
No matter who he was, she had no business entertaining ideas. She had work to do. Preparations to make. A brain to fix.
“Your grandmother told me you were recuperating at her house,” the man said.
“Nana is spoiling me rotten.” Just keep talking. Maybe she would figure it out.
“She always did. Do you…would you dance with me?”
The exhaustion Willow had felt moments earlier vanished like mist on a hot day. “Sure,” she heard herself say. Oh, why not? It was just a dance. No law said she couldn’t dance with a sexy guy at a wedding.
The song was an old number by Clint Black, and the man took Willow into his arms in an easy two-step. She didn’t consider herself much of a dancer, but her partner was easy to follow and soon they were gliding across the floor with little effort, a veritable Fred and Ginger.
“So, what are you up to these days?” Willow asked. This question had served her well all evening. Once someone started talking about themselves, she could usually figure out who they were.
The man shrugged his broad shoulders. “Same old stuff. Making a living. Trying to stay out of trouble.”
That was no help!
“I hear you’re off to med school in a few weeks,” he said.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You’ve worked pretty hard to get there. You must be proud.”
“Still a lot of work ahead.” More than anyone knew.
Willow didn’t want to talk about herself, and her dance partner wouldn’t talk about himself. So they danced in a highly charged silence, gliding across the floor in perfect harmony. The man’s hands were large, slightly rough from hard work and unusually warm. The one at her waist felt like it could burn a hole through her silk dress.
She avoided looking straight at him because something in his eyes made her want to squirm uncomfortably. It was almost as if he knew more about her than she knew herself, that he could see deep to her core and know her innermost secrets.
But how could that be? This man could not possibly be someone she knew well or she would have figured out his identity by now. Although his voice struck a slight chord of familiarity, she couldn’t place it. It was deep, a little bit hoarse and husky, as if he were just recovering from a cold or had been yelling too long and too loud at a baseball game.
The bouncy song came to a close, then immediately blended into a slow ballad, some dreamy old thing by Patsy Cline. Willow knew she should thank the man for the dance and sit down. A song like this was reserved for lovers, so they could hold each other close and murmur into each other’s ears and be intimate in a public place.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Instead she nestled into the warm embrace of her mysterious stranger, where she seemed to fit perfectly. There wasn’t even a moment of awkwardness. His strong arms slid around her waist, hers went around his neck and she laid her head lightly on his shoulder. She could smell traces of his aftershave, something old-fashioned like English Leather, or maybe just lime-scented shaving cream. She’d never been good at telling one smell apart from another, which was unfortunate, because smell was one of the main cues face-blind people used to distinguish friends…and lovers.
Mmm, she was sure she would remember this scent, though. Shampoo? Starch? Laundry detergent? Whatever it was, the blend was intoxicating.
Willow hoped no one was watching her. They might think it strange to see her so intimately wrapped up with—whom? Who could it be? Was she behaving inappropriately? Surely if the man was married he wouldn’t act like this in public. But men could certainly be cads.
Oh, shoot, she didn’t care. Anyway, the lights had been turned down so low, no one could see who was dancing with whom. An old-fashioned disco ball spun in the air above them, the tiny bits of mirrored glass casting glittering flecks of light over the dancers, creating a cocoon of surrealism.
Her partner had maneuvered her away from the main crowd on the floor, Willow realized. Spinning slowly through the song’s smoky tendrils, they’d angled toward some ivy-festooned, papier-mâché Roman columns, then into a shadowy alcove. And there, behind a screen of ivy leaves, he kissed her.
