and had in fact insisted on it. But it wasn’t all that easy for him. His mother was going to be sixty-two inches of trouble. The woman had an eye for the lies her children told and always had. He thought he could pull off today, but then to act wildly enamored of Tricia considering their past? Now that was going to be a feat.
Because everything about Tricia just plain annoyed him. From her self-confidence to her uniform, she wasn’t the girl he’d loved. The problem was that somehow she was all the more fascinating for the changes he’d seen in her so far.
If he were completely honest with himself, Travis knew he’d have to admit his real problem with the differences was that she had grown and stretched beyond the potential he’d seen in her. She had been right. He would have held her back.
And that really frosted him.
Pulling open the door of the Stagecoach Café, Travis nearly cringed. Both his mother and Fiona were there, as he’d thought they would be. And they’d seen him. It was too late to back out and call off this hoax of a date.
“Travis!” Lidia Vance called out. “Come back here and sit where I can talk to you, while I fold these napkins.” She rushed to him, braced her small hands on his forearms and tiptoed from her slight height to peck him on the cheek. Instinctively, Travis wrapped his arms around her small round form and hugged her.
“I can only chat for a few minutes, Mom. I’m meeting someone for lunch. It’s a…uh…it’s a date.”
Travis felt his face heat. This was never going to work. As he expected, his mother was more than mildly surprised. Her eyebrows rose as her big brown eyes widened. “Here? You’re bringing a girl here? Is it that nice woman who you met through the auction?”
He almost burst that bubble of hope he’d seen so often in the past and saw again now. She wanted, and he knew even prayed, that he would pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Much as he would like to make his mother happy, he didn’t deserve to go on with his life when his wife and child were dead because of his failure as a husband and father. But for now he’d have to let her think her wish was about to come true. Telling her the truth some day in the weeks to come wasn’t going to be easy.
Pushing away dark thoughts, Travis explained, “I ran into Patty…uh…Tricia Streeter, I mean. We decided to meet for lunch.”
“Tricia?”
He forced a smile he didn’t feel, feeling instead like one of the jack-o’-lanterns that were decorating the town. Cardboard. Fake. A sham. “It was good to see her again. I was…surprised how much.” That at least was true, much to his disgust.
“That’s so nice. You were always such a cute couple,” his mother said, patting his arm. There was a mixture of emotions reflected in her dark, almost all-seeing eyes. Principal among them was delight. She’d bought it and Travis watched his last chance for a reprieve vanish with the blooming of his mother’s delighted smile.
Chapter Five
“Oh. Here she is now,” Lidia Vance exclaimed, beaming a smile at Tricia as she entered the café. “Tricia, it’s so good to see you! It seems so long.”
Tricia fought the urge to turn tail and run. Travis had obviously told his mother about their lunch date. This was such a bad idea. What had she been thinking? Oh right, she’d decided this was the way to trap Travis into this artificial courtship. Big mistake! Now she was trapped, as well, and she went to church with this woman she was bound to disappoint.
“Lidia, we just spoke at church on Sunday,” Tricia said, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard the note of delight and hope in the older woman’s voice.
Lidia beamed. “But today you’re eating with my Travis. Fiona! Come see who’s come for lunch with our Travis,” she called to her friend, and owner of the Stagecoach Café.
Poor Lidia, once again doomed to disappointment. How could she have forgotten hearing Travis’s mother lamenting the life Travis lived when a church member had asked what he was up to these days? Still, thanks to Tricia’s suspicions about Max Vance, she really had no choice but to insist Travis keep their ruse a secret from his family.
She fought the urge to roll her eyes at Lidia’s effusive greeting when her gaze connected with Travis’s. Then she saw that this was harder for him than it was for her and her guilt doubled. Tripled.
“You two come with me,” Fiona Montgomery said, menus in her hand as she rushed up to them. She wore a bright smile on her face and an apron tied about her ample waist.
“Well, that about tears it,” she heard Travis mutter.
And it did. Now they were well and truly stuck for the duration. The addition of Fiona to the day meant their “romance” would be telegraphed through all branches of the Montgomery and Vance families. Fiona meant no harm but she loved gossip and Western Union had nothing on her for speed or efficiency.
“This must be family day around here,” Fiona said, her artificially bright red hair bouncing as she bubbled along the row of tables. “Jake came in a few minutes ago with one of his signature blondes,” Fiona went on. “I’m going to clear my special table for you two while the four of you visit for a minute.” She shook her head and frowned, laying her hand on Travis’s arm and saying in a conspiratorial, low voice, “Try to talk some sense into him. All these women…” She tut-tutted. “It breaks his mother’s heart that he won’t settle down.”
They walked along, passing a few more tables when Travis stopped next to a well-dressed, sandy-haired man who shared one side of a table with a stylish blonde. The man’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he shot a crooked grin Travis’s way. “You look a little shell-shocked, pal. Forget about the way those two are, did you?” Jake asked, standing and extending his hand to Travis. “I heard your mother’s delight at this interesting turn of events all the way back here.”
Travis shook his lifelong friend’s hand. “I guess I’m out of practice. This is Major Patricia Streeter. Tricia, I’ve known Jake Montgomery since he was in the play-pen tossing his toys at those of us with the freedom of our parents’ backyards.”
She remembered the stories of Travis’s enviable childhood well. “Is this the Jake you got stuck in a tree with when you were ten or so?”
Jake took her hand, his smile utterly charming. She found herself staring into his arresting blue eyes and said, “Pleased to meet you, Jake.”
“Well, hello, pretty lady. Did he happen to tell you it was his fault I got stuck up there? He dared me to go higher and I wasn’t one to turn down a dare from one of the older kids. It would have meant I was still a baby.” He shrugged. “So I climbed higher. And got stuck. Then Travis knew he’d really catch it if he didn’t get me down, and he got stuck, too. So we both got punished. His mother made us write ‘I will not climb a tree until I’m twelve’ twenty-five times.”
Travis chuckled. “Twenty-five for you. Fifty for me, because I was older.”
Jake never took his eyes off her. It was unnerving. “Where’s Travis been hiding you?” he asked, still holding her hand.
Tricia smiled back, not knowing what else to do, and shrugged. He simply made you look at him by his sheer presence. “At Peterson Air Force Base, I guess,” she said, unsure how to handle his singular brand of attention. At the moment, with his intense eyes staring
