LITMIR.BIZ

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image,” Brody said, without inflection. “And for your information—not that I owe you an explanation, because I sure as hell don’t—nothing has happened.”

      “Right,” Joleen scoffed. “Well, I’m coming back anyway. If you get lonely, I’ll be at my folks’ house, trying to convince them that I’m a good girl after all.”

      “Good luck with that one,” Brody said, sensing a letup in the tension, however slight. He’d never loved Joleen, and they’d had some wild fights in their time, but he liked her. Wanted her to be happy.

      “You and me,” Joleen mused, surprising him with the depth of the insight that came next, “we pretty much just use each other to keep everybody else at a safe distance, don’t we?”

      “Yeah,” Brody agreed presently. “I think that’s what we’ve been doing, all right.”

      “Huh,” Joleen said decisively, as though she’d come to some conclusion.

      “And it’s time we both moved on,” Brody added. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.

      “Just tell me who she is,” Joleen urged.

      “There isn’t a specific she, Joleen.”

      “The hell there isn’t, Brody Creed. I know you, remember? You’ve been on this path for a while now, coming back to Lonesome Bend, making up with Conner and Kim and Davis, building a house—” She made a moist sound then and, for one terrible moment, Brody feared Joleen was either already crying or about to. “Silly me,” she finally went on. “I thought all that talk about not getting too serious was just that—talk. We go way back, Brody.”

      Brody shut his eyes for a moment, remembering things he’d been doing his best to forget right along. Joleen had been Conner’s girlfriend, back in the day, and with plenty of help from him—Brody—she’d driven a wedge between the brothers that might have kept them estranged for a lifetime, instead of a decade.

      And a decade, to Brody’s mind, was plenty too long to be on the outs with Conner.

      “I’m sorry if you misunderstood,” Brody said quietly, when the air stopped sizzling with Joleen’s ire. “But I never gave you any reason to think whatever it was we had together was going anywhere, Joleen, and I’m not responsible for what goes on in your imagination.”

      She sighed, calming down a little. “Is this the part where you say we’ll always be friends?” she asked, at long last.

      “That’s up to you, Joleen,” Brody said, wishing he could ask her not to come back, at least not right away, because things were complicated enough already. Trouble was, Lonesome Bend was as much her home as his, and she had every right to spend time there. “We can be friends, or we can steer clear of each other for a while and let the dust settle a little.”

      “I could make trouble for you, you know,” Joleen reminded him mildly.

      Was she serious or not? He couldn’t tell.

      “You could,” he allowed.

      “You might as well tell me who she is, Brody,” Joleen went on reasonably, ignoring what he’d said. “I can find out with a phone call or two, anyway.”

      “Up to you,” Brody reiterated. “Goodbye, Joleen.”

      She paused, absorbing the finality of his words. Gave another sniffle...and hung up on him.

      Brody closed his phone and stood there looking at it for a few moments, frowning.

      Barney, snugged down over by the stove, raised his head off his muzzle and regarded his master with something resembling pity.

      He was probably imagining that part, Brody decided.

      “Women,” he told the dog, before turning back to the computer and the message he’d been trying to write to Carolyn. “There’s no making sense of them, no matter how you try. They say one thing when they mean another. They cry when they’re sad, and when they’re happy, too, so you never know where you stand.”

      Barney gave a little whimper and settled back into his snooze.

      Grimly, Brody glared at the message box on the screen in front of him. Hope you’re feeling better was as far as he’d gotten, as far as he was likely to get, if inspiration didn’t strike soon.

      There didn’t seem to be much danger of that.

      He rubbed his chin again, aware that his beard was growing in. He’d shaved just that morning—hadn’t he?

      Brody tried to round up his thoughts, get them going in the same direction, but it was hard going. He was mystified to find himself so confused and at a loss for words. He’d been a smooth talker all his life, he reflected, but when it came to Carolyn Simmons, it seemed, he was about as verbal as a pump handle. Presently, Brody gave up and hit the delete key, logged off of the computer and turned around in his chair.

      The bed was still unmade, and there was still no woman in it.

      The microwave and the minifridge, inanimate objects posing as some kind of kitchen, presented a sad image of the bachelor life.

      The only bright spot in the whole place, Brody decided glumly, after mulling it all over, was the dog.

       CHAPTER SIX

      DENIAL, CAROLYN DECIDED, as she went through the motions of opening the shop for business promptly at nine the next morning, would be the watchword of the day.

      All she had to do was pretend. That she hadn’t gotten tipsy on wine at Kim and Davis’s tamale supper, in front of Brody Creed.

      That she hadn’t leaned out the door of a hot guy’s truck and thrown up on the side of the road.

      That she hadn’t made an utter and complete idiot of herself.

      Like hell she hadn’t. She’d done all those things and more, and the worst part was, she didn’t know why. It wasn’t like her to drink at all, let alone overindulge. She simply didn’t have the capacity to assimilate alcohol, never had.

      Now, confounded as well as queasy, Carolyn looked up at the Weaver, the art piece gracing the high place on the wall, seeking wisdom in all that quietness and color, but all she got was a crick in her neck and the conclusion that her longtime coping mechanism had failed her.

      Without denial to fall back on, she’d be stuck with reality.

      Yikes.

      There were positive sides to the situation, though. She had slept through the night, at least, and two more aspirin, with a water chaser, had made her head stop pounding.

      She hadn’t been able to manage coffee, though, or even herbal tea.

      Breakfast? Forget about it.

      Her stomach was still pretty iffy.

      So she’d fed Winston, taken a shower and gotten dressed for the day, choosing faux-alligator flats, black pants and a rather prim-looking white shirt over her usual: jeans, T-shirt and Western boots. She applied makeup—without blusher, she’d have had no color at all—and even put her hair up in a sort of twisty do she hoped looked casually elegant, then donned her one and only pair of gold posts.

      She wanted to look...well, businesslike. A woman of substance and good sense.

      But she’d settle for looking sober.

      Tricia breezed in at nine-fifteen, wearing sandals and a soft green maternity sundress and carrying two mega-size cups of coffee from the take-out place down the street. She glowed like a woman who’d spent the night enjoying great sex with her adoring husband.

      Carolyn felt a stab of envy. Great work, if you could get it.

      Casting a glance at Carolyn before she set the cups on the display counter,

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