far as he was concerned, it was the smartest move his big brother had ever made, to get himself hooked up with Molly O’Dare.
By eight, at last, the babies were tucked into their cribs in the darkened nursery, their nanny watching over them from the small bedroom across the hall.
Tate announced what he usually announced about that time in the evening. “Got a few things to tie up downstairs.” Tucker’s brother had a study on the first floor at the front of the house. Tate kept close tabs on the family holdings at the big computer in there.
Molly moved into the circle of her husband’s arms for a fond, quick kiss and then Tate headed for the main staircase.
Tucker saw his opportunity and seized it. “Got a moment?”
Molly shrugged. “Sure. How ‘bout some coffee?”
“Lead me to it.” He fell in step behind her as she turned for the narrow back stairs that led to the family room and kitchen below.
At the table in the breakfast room, Molly poured him a mug of coffee, brewed herself a quick cup of herb tea and settled into the chair across from him. He watched her fiddle with her tea bag and tried to figure out how to begin.
Molly knew a lot about what went on in the Junction. She was not only the town’s first female mayor, she also ran her beauty salon, Prime Cut, as a place where all the women in town could gather to talk about things that most males of the species would never dare to think of. At the Cut, the lives and loves of the citizens of Tate’s Junction were dissected and analyzed freely and openly, with no-holds-barred.
“So what’s up?” Molly set her tea bag on the edge of her saucer.
Tucker decided he might as well just come right out with it. “Tell me everything you know about Lori Lee Billingsworth.”
His brother’s wife watched him over the rim of her cup as she sipped her tea. With great care, she set the cup down. “Taylor. Her last name is Taylor. She was married.”
“But she’s a widow now.”
Molly gave him a measuring look. “Lucky for you, right?”
“Molly, damn it. I could use a little help here.”
Tate’s wife wrapped her fingers with their long, shiny red fingernails around her teacup. “What’s this about? You had one sister and now you want to make it an even pair?”
Tucker gaped—and then shook his head. “Molly. You got a mouth on you.”
“So I’ve been told. Answer my question.”
“No,” he said, emphatically. “It’s not like that. This has got nothing at all to do with Lena. Lena and I, well, that was a long, long time ago.”
Molly wore the look of a doubting woman. She asked, each word sharp with suspicion, “Water under the bridge, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
He nodded. “Lena’s happy now. She loves Dirk. And you know what? I’m nothing but happy for her.”
“But you did love her. Once.”
Had he? Tucker wasn’t so sure. “I was crazy over her, yeah. But love? Hell. We were kids. She wanted a life right here, in town. She wanted for us to have that big wedding she’s going to have now and settle down here at the ranch house, where she was going to pop out two or three babies and do her best to help me spend Granddaddy’s money.”
“You’re still carrying a grudge against her.”
“No,” he said again, even more strongly than before. “I’m carrying no grudges. I’m telling you how it was, that’s all. Lena wanted a nice life, here in town. And I wanted out. Bad. We broke up—which made it possible for both of us to get what we wanted. It would have been a disaster, Lena and me. She knows it. I know it. End of story.”
Well, except for that one night…
Tucker had come home from college—where he was flunking just about every course and soon to drop out—to take Lena to her prom. The night before the dance, she’d told him it was over between them, that they wanted different things and it just wasn’t working.
He’d agreed with her. He’d been thinking it was time to move on for a while by then, but he hadn’t known how to tell her. Even now, he could remember the feeling of sweet relief that had flowed through him when she said she didn’t want to be his girl anymore.
And then she’d told him she couldn’t see any way out of the two of them going to the prom together. Tucker, figuring it was the least he could do to pay her back for handing him the freedom he’d been yearning for, had promised to take her.
That night, which he’d dreaded, ended up being pure magic.
They were breaking up and still…she wove a spell around him. He found himself long-gone in love with her, more than ever before. She knocked him out. She bowled him right over.
But now?
No. All that was over. All that was long ago. When he saw Lena now, he felt a vague sort of fondness. He liked her now. She was always smiling, a cheerful woman, all wrapped up in herself—but in a charming way. They were friends, though not close friends. When he saw her now, he found it impossible to think of her as the girl he’d held in his arms on that beautiful, unforgettable night.
Tucker leaned across the table toward his sister-in-law. “So what’s the story about Brody? Lori’s husband couldn’t have been his father—right?”
Molly sighed—and finally started talking. “No. The boy isn’t her husband’s. She married the husband—a dentist, an older guy—six or seven years ago, when Brody was two or three. Word is that nobody but Lori knows who Brody’s real father is.”
“Except for the father himself, right?”
Molly frowned. “Maybe not.”
“The kid’s father doesn’t even know that he’s a dad?”
“Tucker, how would I know? All I know is what people say.”
“And that’s what I want from you. What people say…”
Molly looked down into her teacup, and then back up at him. “Rumor has it some stranger came through town at the end of Lori’s senior year. Lori disappeared one night in May, in one of Heck’s cars. It wasn’t like her, to take off like that. You know how she was. The shy, quiet, one. Hardly dated. Heck got worried she’d been kidnapped or something. He had the police out looking for her. They found her way up at the North Fork of Cook Creek, parked right on the bank, staring out over the water, crying her little heart out. She claimed that she’d done nothing wrong—and that nothing had happened to her. She’d just driven around, that was all.
“But then, a couple of months later, when she turned up in the family way, everyone in town naturally assumed it must have happened that night she disappeared. They all figured she must have met someone, that he got her pregnant and then headed out, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“And when Heck found out she was pregnant, he packed
