LITMIR.BIZ

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      Molly had been sworn in as mayor six months ago, at the first of the year. She and Tate fought tooth and nail through three town council meetings: January, February and March. Then he asked her to dinner—just the two of them, in the massive formal dining room out at the big house on his family’s ranch, the Double T. Tate said they would discuss ways to “work together to get things done for our town.”

      There hadn’t been much discussing that night. They barely made it past the appetizer. He was on her like paint, and she didn’t complain. She fell right into his bed. Heck. Fell? She jumped in and dragged him in after her. All the years without anything remotely resembling a sex life, all those years of forbidden fantasies featuring Tate, had caught up with her.

      And now she was pregnant.

      A woman like Molly knew she had to face facts. She was thirty years old. Until Tate, there’d been no one. She had no reason to assume there would be someone after Tate. This might end up being her only chance to become a mom.

      So she was stuck. She refused to throw her one chance at motherhood away, no matter what Tate Bravo might imagine he had to say about it. And she wasn’t leaving her salon, Prime Cut, or the small Texas town that she loved.

      So there she was, just like her mom and her Granny before her—pregnant with no husband in the town where she grew up. Once she started showing, tongues would be wagging. Like grandmother, like mother, like daughter, they would all say.

      Well, too bad. She would deal with the gossip when the time came. She was keeping her baby and that was that.

      “Molly, did you hear a single word I said?” Betty demanded.

      Molly met Betty’s eyes again. “I certainly did. That poor Titus. How does he bear up?”

      Betty kind of squinted at her. “You know, honey, you don’t look all that well.”

      “Oh, I’m fine,” Molly replied, faking lightheartedness for all she was worth. “Never felt better…”

      Betty wiggled her drawn-on eyebrows and scowled. “You’re not letting that Tate Bravo get you down, are you? Heard he shouted at you last Thursday at the town council meeting…”

      Molly’s heart did a forward roll and then slammed into her rib cage. Did Betty know?

      As soon as she thought the question, she rejected it. No one knew—not yet, anyway. By mutual agreement, she and Tate had kept their affair strictly secret. He didn’t want the word getting out that he was sleeping with the woman who fought him tooth and nail at every turn. And she didn’t want the people who counted on her to find out she couldn’t keep her hands off the man who stood for everything that needed changing in their town.

      Molly put on a totally unconcerned expression as she combed and then smoothed a section of Betty’s hair between two fingers. Neatly, she snipped it even. “Don’t you worry, Betty. I can handle Tate Bravo.” Oh, and hadn’t she just? She’d handled him in ways that would turn Betty’s face as red as her hair.

      Betty harrumphed. “Well, of course you can. That’s why we voted you in as our mayor. It’s about time someone stood up to those Tates.”

      Though Tate’s last name was Bravo, his mother had been the only child of the last surviving male Tate. So Tate and his younger brother, Tucker, inherited the extensive Tate holdings when their mother passed away. No one ever talked much about the mysterious man named Bravo who had—according to Tate’s mother—married her and sired both her boys. To everyone in town, Tucker and Tate were Tates in the truest sense of the word. And Tates had been running Tate’s Junction since the town was named after the first Tucker Tate, way back in 1884.

      “We do admire your gumption, Molly.”

      “Why, thank you, Betty.” Molly set down her scissors and grabbed the blow-dryer off the rack where it waited next to a row of curling irons. “Let’s just blow you dry, now, shall we?”

      Betty wasn’t the only customer to notice Molly’s distraction. All day long it was, “Molly, you look worried, girl. What’s the matter?” and, “Earth to Molly. Are you in there, doll?” or, “Molly, sweetheart, what is botherin’ you?”

      She told each and every one of them that she was fine, perfect, never been better—while the whole time the hard knot in her stomach seemed to promise that any second now Tate would come storming through the shop door and start shouting at her. By six, when she closed up shop, she was a wreck. All she wanted was to crawl into bed with the blinds drawn and a cool cloth over her eyes.

      Molly’s little bungalow on Bluebonnet Lane was her pride and joy. Sure, it was small—750 square feet, two tiny bedrooms, simple box floor plan—but it was hers and that was what mattered. It sat back from the street surrounded by sweetgums and oaks. On the south end of town, in an area not very developed yet, all tucked into the trees the way it was, the house almost gave a person the feeling she was out in the country.

      Molly put her pickup under the carport east of the house. She strolled across the yard to the porch, feeling the tensions of the day drain away from between her shoulder blades. It wasn’t too hot yet—mid-eighties that afternoon—and the air had a silky feel against her skin. A cheeky squirrel squawked at her from a tree branch, and she paused to grin up at it.

      She was just mounting the front steps when the door swung back and there was Granny Dusty standing behind the storm door in Wranglers and rawhide boots and a tight plaid Western shirt. She shoved open the storm door, too. “Wait till I tell you. Baby doll, you are not going to believe this.”

      Tate, Molly thought, her stomach knotting and the tension yanking tight between her shoulders again. Oh, God, what had he done? Had he been there, had he had it out with Granny?

      Granny Dusty had a reputation, pretty much deserved, as the man-hatingest woman in Throckleford County. She had trusted one man in her life—the wrong one. A rich rancher from Montana, he’d come to town to do business with the Tates. The rancher knocked up Dusty with Molly’s mother, Dixie, and then promptly went back to his wife on his big spread outside of Bozeman. After the rancher from Montana, Dusty O’Dare had no more use for men.

      “What happened?” Molly asked weakly.

      “That fool mother of yours says she’s marrying Ray, that’s what.”

      Not about Tate. Molly’s stomach unknotted and her heart stopped trying to break out of her rib cage.

      Granny continued with bitter relish, “She called here an hour ago, that mother of yours, all atwitter with the news. I ask you, sweetness, has she lost what is left of her mind? Ray Deekins is a no-count. He hasn’t had a job since the Reagan years. And your mother is forty-six. You’d think she’d have grown out of all this love foolishness by now. Isn’t it enough that she’s let him move in with her? Can’t she just support his lazy butt and leave it at that? Does she have to go and get herself legally committed to him? What is the matter with—?”

      “Granny.”

      Granny glared—but at least she stopped talking.

      “You think maybe I could get in the house before you start in about Ray?”

      Granny Dusty smiled then, the network of wrinkles in her leathery cheeks scoring all the deeper. “Why sure, sugar, you just come on in.” She held the storm door wider. Molly mounted the steps and entered the house. Beyond the door, the savory smell of fried meat filled the air. “Made your favorite,” said Granny. “Chicken-fried steak.”

      Though as a rule Molly loved a good chicken-fried steak as much as the next person, that night her stomach clenched tight again at the thought. “Maybe later. I have a sick headache. Think I’d better lie down.”

      Now Granny got worried. “Honey pie, you got a fever? Want me to—”

      “No. Really. Just a little rest, that’ll do me fine.” Molly headed for the house’s one tiny hallway and her bedroom, the front one that faced the walk.

      Granny

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