the rest of the dance, she didn’t look him in the eye. She pretended he could be any one of the men on the dance floor—no one special, no one sexy, no one who made her heart beat much too fast.
When the song ended, Erika was relieved, but Dillon didn’t let her pull away. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I just remembered—” No, she wasn’t going to make an excuse. She wasn’t going to lie to him. “I have to go, Dillon. Thanks for dinner but I do have to go.”
Then she left him standing there, looking puzzled as she walked away. And when she pushed open the door into the cool September air, she didn’t look back. Her daughter Emilia came first.
And she would never forget that.
Chapter Two
Dillon pulled money from his wallet and flicked it onto the table with his bill. What had gone wrong with Erika?
Just as he asked himself the question, he felt the vibration of his cell phone on his belt. Did someone at the resort need him?
When he pulled the phone from its holder, he checked the screen and smiled. “Hold on a sec, Corey, until I leave the restaurant.”
Outside the door, Dillon took a deep breath, wondering why Erika’s leaving had disappointed him so deeply. He didn’t even know her. He shouldn’t even think about knowing her. He was here for a month, then he’d be gone. Besides that, she had to be twelve or thirteen years younger than he was. Maybe that was the whole problem. She decided she’d rather be out with someone her own age.
Now, however, his mind went to his brother, holding the line from Midland, Texas. “Okay, now I can hear,” Dillon said. “I was at the Hitching Post. You know how noisy that can get.”
Corey laughed, a good old Texas chuckle. At thirty-three and six feet tall, with light brown hair and brown eyes, his brother was the epitome of a Texas male. As a management consultant, he dressed stylishly when he chose to, but he was most at home in his boots and jeans. He’d spent some time with Dillon, their cousins and friends at the Hitching Post in June.
“What were you doing at the Hitching Post?” Corey asked. “Don’t tell me you were trying to pick up somebody at happy hour?”
Corey enjoyed women’s company and didn’t understand why Dillon still didn’t date.
He and his brother had always been honest with each other. Although Ethan was between them in age, Corey and Dillon thought more alike on subjects other than women and had gotten to be better friends the older they’d grown.
So now when Corey asked, Dillon was honest. “I was here with someone.”
There was a pause as if Corey was thinking about that. “With someone? Like the receptionist you met at the resort this summer?”
“You guessed that how?”
“I saw the way you looked at her when she led us to Marshall’s office in June. But more than that, I saw the way she looked back.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not looking back now. We were having an enjoyable evening, then all of a sudden she froze up and left. I would have appreciated a hint as to what I did wrong.”
“You’ll probably never know,” Corey empathized. “I don’t understand women any more than you do. They have a language I don’t get—a language they want us to learn, yet they don’t want to teach it to us.”
After another pause, Dillon asked, “Did you call just to see how things are going here?”
“Partly. Actually I might be in Montana again in November. I’m thinking about staying at the lodge. How do you like it there?”
“It’s luxurious. Anything you might need is at your fingertips.”
“But?” Corey asked perceptively.
“But if you’re going to stay any length of time, you might want to rent one of the condos. Many of them are empty.”
“Thanks—I’ll keep that in mind. So how do you like Marshall’s practice?”
“A medical practice like this one could be any doctor’s lifelong dream. I can even glimpse elk from the wall of windows in my office.”
“Yet it’s not your dream?”
“I can’t dream anymore, Corey.”
The silence between them was telling and Dillon asked a clipped, “What?”
“You have to let go of the guilt. You’ll never be happy again if you don’t. For the millionth time, you had no control over Toby’s leukemia.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Thoughts of Dillon’s four-and-a-half-year-old son who’d died were so bittersweet he usually closed the door on them.
“All right. So let’s talk about what you’re going to do when your stint for Marshall is up. Are you going to accept that concierge practice in Odessa?”
The doctor who had offered Dillon the position had put a sweet deal on the table. “I don’t know. Taking care of the guests at the resort is a somewhat similar experience. I’m going to see how I like it before I make up my mind.”
“Good idea. The truth is I don’t know if I can see you being at the beck and call of patients because they’re paying you well for the opportunity to have you as their doctor. It doesn’t sound like you.”
“I never thought I’d be here at the resort, taking over for Marshall, either.”
Corey waited a beat before asking, “So you just ran into this receptionist again?”
“Not exactly. Erika’s my receptionist now.”
“Ah-hah! The plot thickens. Just how did she come to be your receptionist?”
“Grant assigned her. I’m not taking up all her time. It’s pretty slow for her most days, but she’s the one planning Frontier Days. She’s working right outside my office all day, so we interact.”
“I see. And tonight you decided to interact on a personal rather than business level?”
His brother’s words brought back the image of him holding Erika in his arms, his hand under her hair, his other hand clasping hers. At first, as they’d danced, she’d been close enough to arouse him. But then she’d needed some space. He got that. They didn’t know each other very well. But leaving as she had—
“Ask her,” Corey suggested.
“Ask her what?”
“Ask her why she left. That’s what you want to know, right? Maybe she’s one of those rare women who will actually tell you the truth.”
His silence was answer enough for Corey.
His brother offered, “Yeah, the Texas Traubs inherited as much pride as oil money. You know what Mom’s always preached—pride
