have been a terrible mistake. His stud fees alone—”
“Damn! He knew everything about me, didn’t he?” He narrowed his eyes. “Who is this guy? What can you tell me about him? Did he look like me?”
She gazed at him. “No.”
“What did he look like? Tell me everything you remember. If he knew me that well, I might recognize him.”
She hardly knew where to begin. Looking at this man, trying to think of him as Chase, was as disorienting as looking into a fun house mirror.
Her Chase had been handsome, with a slight, but well-muscled body and a face so pretty it was almost feminine. The day he sauntered into the café, his rosebud lips and china-blue eyes had turned every female head. He was a little girl’s childhood dream come to life, a fairy-tale prince with a charmingly cocked Stetson hat and sexy snakeskin boots.
This Chase wasn’t anything that simple. He was too ruggedly male, too intimidatingly real, to have stepped out of any kind of dream. He was a good six inches taller than her Chase, with double the shoulder span. His whole body seemed to have been carved from a much-harder material, and his energy radiated out, creating a force field that she imagined few could resist.
His face was full of fascinating contradictions. His square, don’t-mess-with-me jaw came to a sweetly dimpled chin. His bedroom-blue eyes were fringed in black lashes so long that when he shut them they brushed the prominent, knife-blade cheekbones below.
His upper lip came to a sharp bow. Not like her Chase’s lips. This mouth wouldn’t ever make a woman think of rosebuds, because she’d be too busy thinking of… other things.
“He was smaller,” she said, though she knew it was woefully inadequate. “Several inches shorter, and…more wiry all over. He had blond hair and blue eyes, but paler than yours. Less intense.”
“Was he my age?”
“He said he was thirty-one. He looked about that, I’d say. But again, I didn’t check his ID.”
“That could be a million guys in Texas alone, including me. Is there anything else that might help? Did he have an accent? Any scars? Tattoos? Injuries? Anything unique?”
She thought hard. It was strange, but her mental image of Chase—her Chase—had grown fuzzy, like someone seen through a fog. What had done that, she wondered? The discovery that he was not merely a garden-variety love-’em-and-leave-’em heartbreaker, but also a first-class fraud and a liar?
Or had he just been obscured by the sheer force of the real Chase?
“Well…he had a slight Texas accent, a nice voice, well-educated East Texas. But that could have been fake, too, I suppose.”
“What else?”
She shut her eyes and tried to summon up a clear image. “Nothing else, really. Nothing unique, anyhow.”
“There must have been something special about him.” Chase sounded impatient. “You met him only three months ago. Dr. Marchant says you’re almost three months pregnant. So I repeat. There must have been something special about him.”
“Chase.” Susannah left the window and came toward the bed. “I don’t think this is the time to—”
“It’s all right,” Josie said. She squared her shoulders and looked at Chase. “I don’t mind the question. It wasn’t that simple, Mr. Clayton. I didn’t fall for him because of the way he looked. It was the way he acted. It was the way he made me feel. He was nice to me. He was friendly and had a good sense of humor, and he knew how to have fun. He took me out to expensive dinners, and he listened to me when I talked. He rubbed my feet when they hurt after work, and he bought me things. Not flowers and perfumes, but things I needed. A teapot. A clock radio. New sheets.”
Susannah moved even closer, her hand outstretched. “Miss Whitford, you’re very tired. It’s been a terrible day—”
“No,” Josie broke in. She didn’t want pity. Especially not from this woman, who had everything Josie would never have—a healthy, golden life with the real Chase, the sexy rancher with gentle hands and a tender heart.
She hadn’t told them how the fake Chase had really seduced her—using the sweet, corny stories of a little boy who loved his home, his horse and his dog. The little boy who sold a baseball card to buy his mother chocolates, but ate them all before he made it home.
She had believed her heart—and her body—were safe in the hands of a man like that.
She tried to speak. To her horror, she realized she’d begun to choke up again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m all right. I think being pregnant does a number on your hormones, that’s all. I’m not crying. At least not…not because of Chase.”
Chase gazed at her, unblinking. “I’m Chase.”
“Of course.” She wiped roughly under her eyes with the knuckles of her index fingers. “You know what I mean. I’m not crying because of him. I’m anxious about the future, and of course the baby. And I’m shocked to discover how completely I was conned. But I’m not heartbroken.”
“Why not? Are you saying that what you felt for him wasn’t really love?”
She hesitated. That first week, she had thought it might be. But maybe it had just been…hope.
Hope that she could still be lighthearted and happy, in spite of working so hard and worrying every minute about money.
Hope that, on any given day, something special just might walk through that café door and single her out. Her. Sickly little Josie Whitford.
Now she had new hope. Hope that she could stay healthy enough to have a healthy baby. Hope that she could be a good mother. Hope that she could face her future, whatever it was, with courage.
And honesty.
She took a deep breath. She might as well begin today.
“No,” she said, in spite of how she knew it would sound. “It definitely wasn’t love.”
“WHAT A MESS.” Susannah Everly tossed her front door keys onto the end table and dropped her purse on the floor. Shutting her eyes, she leaned back against the foyer wall. “What a big, bad, supersized Texas mess.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
Susannah’s eyes flew open. She hadn’t realized that Nicole was within earshot. She’d sent her little sister home with the Parkers hours ago, with instructions to clean her room and do her homework. Judging from how Nikki’s room had looked this morning, that should have taken her a couple of weeks.
Where was she? Susannah scanned the foyer, which was large and beautiful, the prettiest foyer of any ranch in the county. Her mother had decorated this foyer right before she died. Susannah had been fifteen at the time—Nikki a toddler. Susannah had been allowed to pick out the paneling, and she’d chosen a honey pine that she still loved just as much today.
Of course, she loved every inch of Everly Ranch, which had been in her family
