Victoria Pade - Willow in Bloom

“But that was then and this is now,” she said to herself as she crossed her arms on her desk and laid her head on them to rest.

And as much as she wished she could just forget about Tyler Chadwick and that night, the way he apparently had, she couldn’t.

So what was she going to do? she asked herself.

One thing that she definitely couldn’t see herself doing was marching up to him and announcing out of the blue that, whether he remembered it or not, they’d slept together and that she was pregnant as a result.

But what if she gave him more of a chance to remember her? What if she did what she could to spend some time with him? To let him get to know her? To see more of her?

Maybe something about the sound of her voice or the way she looked at just the right angle would make him remember her and that night together.

Surely somewhere in his brain there was some image of her that could be brought back to the surface.

And then…

And then…

She didn’t know what then.

But at least it was a first step. It was something to do.

And she needed to do something. Something that could give her a clue as to where to go from here.

Because not only had Willow been knocked for a loop when she found out she was pregnant, she didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about breaking the news to her brothers, or whether or not to tell the baby’s father, or what to expect his reaction would be if she did, or what to do about her entire future.

But getting the baby’s father to remember the baby’s mother seemed like a logical beginning.

She just hoped that her initial impression of Tyler as a genuinely nice guy had had some validity to it and that he wasn’t really the jerk she’d decided he was the day before. That maybe along the way he’d tell her she reminded him of someone he’d once encountered, and she would learn that he hadn’t forgotten her at all, that he just hadn’t connected the dots and realized that she and Wyla were the same person.

It was a hope she tried hard to hang on to even though she was very much afraid the odds were against her.

But still it was a whole lot better to hope that his not knowing her had a simple, believable explanation than to accept what seemed more likely—that he’d spent an entire night making love to her and now didn’t remember who she was.

Willow had the perfect excuse to see Tyler again, and once she’d closed up the Feed and Grain for the day she decided to use it.

But not before making a stop in the apartment above the store.

The apartment had been her grandmother’s, but Willow had moved into it with Gloria when Willow had taken over the running of the Feed and Grain. Now that her grandmother had passed away she lived there alone.

And she never climbed the stairs at the back of the store without wishing she would still find her grandmother there to greet her.

But she was learning to weather those moments, and tonight, when she had, she made a beeline for her own bedroom to change her clothes.

Only as she stood in her closet, trying to figure out what to change into that might give Tyler a hint as to who she was, did it occur to her that all of her things were basically the same—jeans and tops.

She had a couple of pairs of slacks she wore to church, and a plain, simple black dress that she wore with a matching jacket to funerals and, without the jacket, to weddings. But that was about it. And because she knew she’d feel overdressed if she wore her Sunday slacks—besides the fact that it would no doubt raise eyebrows and questions if anyone who knew her saw her—the closest she could come to Wyla-wear was a red V-neck T-shirt with a clean pair of jeans.

She did unbraid her hair, though, brushing it and letting it fall free the way she’d worn it that night. And although lip gloss was all she owned in the way of makeup, she made a mental note to buy herself a few cosmetics as soon as possible to aid her cause.

Then she locked up the apartment and used the outside stairs to go down to her old blue pickup truck, wishing she had a better, sexier vehicle, too.

But there wasn’t anything to be done about it, and so she climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and pulled away from the curb, feeling more anxious than she could ever remember having felt before.

Willow was familiar with all the farms and ranches around Black Arrow. It had been her job at the Feed and Grain to make deliveries after school as soon as she’d been old enough to drive. So she knew exactly where she was going.

The former Harris place was south of town about four miles. She’d gone all through school with the Harrises’ only child, Samantha. But she and Willow hadn’t been friends. Samantha had been a very girly girl—worlds apart from tomboy Willow.

As she turned off the main road onto the private drive she could see the house in the distance. It was a two-story frame, painted white and trimmed in black, with a steep black roof.

The house had a nice front porch—that was what Willow had always liked best about it. The porch was bordered with a spindled railing that looked beautiful at Christmas, decorated with lights and evergreen boughs.

But August was not the time for that, and other than a wicker rocker and a chair swing hanging from chains, the porch itself was littered with several moving boxes apparently waiting to be thrown out.

No lights shone through the windows, but since it was only seven o’clock and there was still an abundance of summer daylight, Willow didn’t think that was a sign that no one was home. Besides, there was a big white truck parked in the drive, so she assumed Tyler was there.

She parked beside the truck and cut her engine, taking a deep breath to bolster her courage and wishing—as she had so many times since June—that things hadn’t taken the turn they had.

But wishing didn’t make any of it go away, so she picked up the file she’d brought with her as her excuse, and got out of the truck to climb the five steps onto the porch.

The front door was open, and through the screen door she could hear music playing. Softly.

She recognized the singer. Chris Isaak. He was one of her favorites, and she hoped that maybe he was one of Tyler’s favorites, too, and the fact that they shared similar musical tastes was a good sign.

She knocked on the screen’s frame, feeling her tension level increase with each rap.

Nothing stirred in response. Chris Isaak just went on singing about the wicked things people do.

Maybe she hadn’t knocked loud enough to be heard over the music. She tried again with more force.

“Hold on,” she heard Tyler call, his unmistakable baritone sounding as if it were coming from the living room to the right of the front door.

Then he came into sight from that direction.

He had on a white T-shirt, a pair of jeans with a tear in the knee, and he was in his stocking feet.

He was hardly dressed for company, yet he still looked good enough to make Willow recall one of the reasons she’d been so swept off her feet by him in Tulsa. The man exuded a raw sensuality that made the woman in her sit up and take notice.

She, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have the same effect on him. The way he squinted his eyes against the light made it look as if he’d been sleeping.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” Willow said, as that thought occurred to her.

“No, no, it’s okay,” he assured her, blinking a few times as if fighting to keep his eyes open. “I just had one of these headaches I get, and the pills for them knock me out.”

“Maybe I should come back another time.”

He waved away that notion with one big, blunt-fingered hand. “Nah. It’s fine. Headache’s gone.”