Tessa followed Melba to the kitchen, where eighteen-month-old Bekka sat in a booster seat at the table, drinking from her favorite sippy cup and munching on Cheerios and grapes. It was after nine, so Levi was off at work in Kalispell.
“Auntie Tess, Auntie Tess! Kiss!” Bekka made loud smacking sounds until Tessa bent close and let the little girl press her plump, sticky lips to her cheek. Tessa might not be good with most babies, but at least her niece seemed to like her well enough. Bekka offered a fistful of Cheerios.
They were limp and soggy. Tessa ate one anyway as Bekka beamed her approval.
Then Tessa got herself some coffee, pausing to pat her sister’s shoulder as she went by. Claire sent her a questioning look, and Tessa gave a rueful shrug in response. She set herself a place at the table, and Claire whipped her up some scrambled eggs. The food helped. Tessa felt a little better about it all once she’d eaten.
Upstairs, she hung her hat on the peg by the door, had a shower and paid no attention to the mild tenderness between her legs. She ignored the love bite on her left breast. It would fade to nothing in a day or two. She let the water run down over her, soothing her shaky nerves. And she tried not to regret what she couldn’t even remember.
Not too much later, dressed in a short denim skirt and a soft plaid shirt, she was on her way to Kalispell. At the first drugstore she came to, she bought a root beer and the hormone pill she needed. She took the pill the moment she got back behind the wheel, sipping the root beer slowly as she drove back to town.
That taken care of, she helped Claire in the kitchen for a while and then went upstairs to check email and dig into some projects she’d acquired through her website. Last Friday, when she’d agreed to ride the Gazette float, she’d told Dawson Landry, the paper’s editor and publisher, that she was looking for design work. Dawson had said that if she came by, he would put her to work. She’d said she would, on Tuesday.
Well, it was Tuesday. And follow-through mattered.
So once she’d made sure she was on top of her other projects, she called Dawson. He said to come on over.
At the Gazette, she spent a couple of hours punching up the layout for the next edition. Once she got absorbed in the work, she was glad she’d come. It helped to keep busy.
As for Carson, well, whatever they’d done last night, it wouldn’t be happening again. Last night was clear proof that she should have followed her first instinct when it came to him, should have stayed at the boardinghouse and out of his way.
She wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. She would get past her own stupid choices yet again. Everybody made mistakes and life went on.
And if Homer Gilmore knew what was good for him, he’d keep the hell away from her for the next hundred years.
* * *
Carson didn’t notice the sketchbook until late that afternoon.
He’d driven into Kalispell, too. He’d had a late breakfast at a diner he found. And then he’d wandered around the downtown area, checking things out, seeing what the larger town had to offer.
Was he hoping he might run into Tessa?
A little. Maybe.
But it didn’t happen.
It was so strange, the way he felt about her. He missed her. A lot. He’d met her less than twenty-four hour ago, yet somehow he felt as though he knew her. She had a kind of glow about her, an energy and warmth. Already he missed that glow.
His world was dimmer, less vibrant, without her.
As he drove back toward Rust Creek Falls, he realized that he hadn’t felt this way about a woman in years. Not since he was fifteen and fell head over heels for Marianne.
He wished he could remember making love with Tessa. Somehow, even though he couldn’t remember what they’d done late in the night, the clean, sweet scent of her skin and the lush texture of her hair were imprinted on his brain.
At the Manor, he spent a couple of hours catching up with email and messages. He got on the phone to a number of employees and associates in Southern California. When asked how the moonshine project was going, he said that it had fallen through.
He didn’t, however, mention flying back to LA, though he might as well pack up and go. There was no reason to stay. So far, though, he’d failed to start filling suitcases. Nor had he alerted the pilot on standby in Kalispell to file a flight plan and get his plane ready to go.
At a little after four, Carson dropped to the sofa in the suite’s sitting room and reached for the TV remote on the coffee table in front of him.
He noticed the two dozen colored pencils and bright, fat, chalklike pastels first. For several seconds, he frowned at them, wondering where they might have come from. Then he saw the sketchbook. The maids had been in and placed it just so on top of the complimentary stack of magazines.
Tessa. The sketchbook must be hers. But he didn’t remember her carrying any art supplies with her yesterday. Where had the pad, the pencils and the pastels come from?
He had no idea. It was yet another lost piece of last night. Curious and way too eager to see what might be inside, he grabbed the sketch pad and started thumbing through it.
Instantly, at the first drawing of a series of different-shaped jars and bottles, he was impressed. Each design was unique. The jars were mason-style, the kind with raised lettering manufactured into the glass. Each one made him feel that he could reach out and grab it, that he could trace the pretty curves of the lettering with the pad of a finger. She had great skill with light and shadow, so the bottles almost seemed to have dimension, to be smooth and rounded, made of real glass.
Carson got that shiver—the one that happened whenever he had a really good idea.
These drawings of Tessa’s gave him ideas.
She gave him ideas. Because beyond being gorgeous and original, with all that wild, dark hair and a husky laugh he couldn’t get out of his head, Tessa Strickland had real talent. He slowly turned the pages, loving what he saw.
She knew how to communicate a concept; her execution was brilliant. Unfortunately, now that a deal with Homer was off the table, he wouldn’t be able to use what she’d come up with here.
But you never knew. Homer Gilmore didn’t have the moonshine market cornered. If Drake Distilleries developed their own, less dangerous brand of ’shine, the Blue Muse and Peach Lightning flavors might well have a future, after all.
And even if he gave up on making moonshine completely, Drake Distilleries could benefit from a talent like Tessa’s. And so could his restaurants and nightclubs. Targeted, carefully executed advertising and effective promotion were a lot of what made everything he put his name on successful. Adding Tessa to the firm that promoted his brand could work for him in a big way.
And for her, too. Before last night faded into oblivion, they had talked about her career, about where she might be going with it. He’d said she should go big. Now that he’d seen her work, he knew he’d been right. If he could make her a tempting enough offer, maybe he could convince her to come to LA, after all.
All at once he felt vindicated. He hadn’t told his people he was returning to Southern
