Brenda Harlen - One Night With The Cowboy

“Plans but no reservations,” Grace piped up helpfully. “So we’re not on any particular schedule. And if we’re not still here after the happy couple say their ‘I do’s,’ we’ll be in room 1268.”

He nodded to Brie. “I’ll find you there later, then.”

Of course, she watched him walk away. She couldn’t help herself. And she couldn’t deny that he looked as good now as he’d looked the last time she saw him, seven years earlier. Maybe even better.

She suspected that her friends were watching him walk away, too, because it was only when he’d disappeared through the doors and back into the hotel that they turned to her.

“Oh. My. God.” It was Lily who spoke first. “I can’t believe you were married.”

“And didn’t tell us,” Grace added.

“Because it was for a very short while a very long time ago,” she said again.

“I don’t care how short it was or how long ago,” Grace said. “That’s not the kind of secret you keep from your best friends.”

“So maybe we’re not her best friends,” Lily suggested, sounding hurt.

“You know you are,” Brie assured them sincerely.

“And yet, you didn’t tell us about your hunky husband,” Grace remarked. “Not a single word.”

“Actually, she said a few words,” Lily noted. “But only after you told us about this trip. And there was definitely no mention of a wedding or a husband.”

Brie sighed, resigned to the imminent interrogation—and maybe a little relieved that she’d finally have the opportunity to unburden herself of the secrets she’d held on to for so long. But aware that her emotions were already running high, she’d prefer not to do so in public. “Can we continue this conversation upstairs?”

“Stalling for seven years wasn’t long enough?” Lily challenged.

“I’m not trying to stall,” Brie denied.

But she wouldn’t have minded a few minutes under the spray of the shower to clear her head and organize her thoughts. Except that after unlocking the door to their suite, Grace pointed to a chair, a wordless command to her to sit.

Her dark-haired, dark-eyed friend with the take-charge personality had always been the unspoken leader of their little group. The other two women sometimes teased her for being bossy, but they were mostly content to follow her lead.

And because Brie accepted that she owed her friends an explanation, she sat. Lily and Grace settled side by side on the sofa, facing her.

“So...you were married,” Grace prompted, when Brie remained silent.

“I was married,” she confirmed.

“Before you moved to New York?” Lily asked, seeking clarification.

She answered with a slow nod.

“Which means you were barely eighteen.”

Brie nodded again. “I was eighteen and—” her voice wavered and her eyes filled with tears “—pregnant.”

* * *

The silence that followed her announcement was so complete, she could almost hear her friends’ jaws drop.

Grace recovered first and asked, “You had a baby?”

Now Brie shook her head and pressed a hand to her chest, as if to assuage the ache that had never quite gone away. “No, I... I lost the baby.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Grace breached the distance to embrace her.

If anyone had asked, Brie would have said that she’d finished crying for her unborn baby years earlier—but the tears that spilled onto her cheeks now proved otherwise.

“Oh, crap.” That remark came from Lily, because any outpouring of emotion inevitably brought on her own tears of empathy. “We didn’t know...we didn’t mean... Oh, Brie, we’re so sorry. Oh, please don’t cry.” She shoved a box of tissues into Brie’s lap, after plucking a couple out for her own use.

She managed a watery smile. “You did so mean to push and pry—it’s what you do.”

“Well, okay,” Lily conceded. “But we didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“Although tears can be therapeutic,” Grace said soothingly. “So you shouldn’t be afraid to let them out.”

“I don’t think I can stop them now,” Brie admitted. It was as if she’d built a dam around her emotions and that dam had suddenly given way, allowing seven years of repressed feelings and grief to flood over her.

She told her friends everything: from the first terrifying suspicion that she was pregnant, to Caleb holding her hands while they waited for the result of the home pregnancy test, followed by his impulsive proposal and their impromptu trip to Vegas, all without telling anyone in either of their families about their plans. And then the fallout, when they finally got back to Haven and shared the news about their wedding and the baby with their parents and grandparents.

“Your grandfather actually had a heart attack when he found out you’d married a Gilmore?” Lily asked.

“I don’t know if the announcement of our wedding directly caused the cardiac arrest, but yes, he had surgery the next day.” She plucked another tissue from the box as her eyes overflowed again. “Four days after that, I had a miscarriage. And since the baby was why we got married, losing the baby meant there was no reason for us to stay married, so I went to see a lawyer and had divorce papers drawn up.”

“I’m sorry,” Grace said again, clearly at a bit of a loss for words.

“You don’t have to apologize. I should have told you both everything a long time ago.”

“We would have been there for you, if we’d known,” Lily said gently.

“Even without knowing, you were there for me,” Brie assured her friends. “When I first went to New York, I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t. The hurt was too raw. Not even Regan or Kenzie knew all the details of what happened. And then...well, the more time that went by, the more I didn’t want to remember everything that happened.”

“Is this really the first time you’ve seen Caleb since you moved away?” Grace asked.

“It is,” she confirmed.

“That’s why you always avoided going home,” Lily realized.

“And why you weren’t thrilled about coming to Vegas,” Grace guessed.

“Well, I never actually believed I’d run into him here,” Brie said.

“And I never would have suggested coming here if I’d known,” Grace said, almost apologetically.

“It’s fine,” Brie said, wishing it was so. “And it was inevitable that our paths would cross sooner or later. Now at least that first awkward meeting is done—and it wasn’t even all that awkward.”

Her friends exchanged a glance.

Brie frowned. “Or was it more awkward than I realized?”

Lily gave a slow shake of her head. “No. At least, awkward isn’t the word I would have used to describe it.”

“I’d suggest sizzling as a more appropriate descriptor,” Grace added.

“Well, it is one hundred and six degrees outside,” Brie remarked.

“And about a thousand degrees hotter between you and your sexy ex,” Lily noted.

She couldn’t dispute the accuracy of her friend’s description. Because even though almost half of the more than eight million people who lived in New York City were male, she’d never met a man who turned her on as much as Caleb Gilmore. “He did look good, didn’t he?”

“I never understood the cowboy mystique,” Grace confided. “ Now I do.”

“Of course, it doesn’t matter how ruggedly handsome he is,” Lily hastened to add. “We hate him for breaking your heart.”

Brie managed a smile, touched by the unswerving loyalty of her friends. “When I left Haven, I broke his, too,” she admitted.

“He shouldn’t have let you go,” Lily said.

But Grace shook her head. “He had to let her go.”

“Why?” Lily demanded.