Two
After lunch, Shay hurried out of the dining room as quickly as she could, wanting to put distance between herself and Tyler. She gave a shuddering sigh and rested her hands on the small folding table she had set up near the entrance to the banquet room. The short walk here had left her unsteady on her feet, but for once she couldn’t blame her shaky balance on the extra weight from her pregnancy.
She had never expected to see Tyler Buckham again, not after he’d left so many months before.
Eight months before. But who was counting?
In the short time he had been in Cowboy Creek last summer, she had fallen hard and fast for him. She had let just a few conversations over just a handful of days lead her to fall into his arms. And then she had made the awful mistake of taking him to bed.
The shame she felt about that now ranked right up there with the worst moments of her life, which included the day she finally acknowledged she wasn’t going to hear from him again.
Now she had another item to add to the list—finding Tyler beside her an hour ago in the Hitching Post’s dining room. Well, he wouldn’t hear anything from her, either, about the fact he had gotten her pregnant before he’d left town.
“And he’s not worth worrying about now, babies,” she said under her breath. “Mommy needs to focus on the reason we’re here at the Hitching Post.”
The next wedding reception being held at the hotel was only a day away. And yet with all they still had left to do in the room, she had been demoted to assembling table decorations.
She had spread her supplies across the small table. On the far side of the room, Jane and a couple of the hotel’s waitresses were taking care of the seating arrangements.
Truthfully, setting up chairs would almost be easier on her now than bending over the display cases at the Big Dipper to scoop up mounds of rock-solid ice cream. But she couldn’t argue about being given light duty here, not when she knew the Garlands were only looking out for her.
Which was exactly what she needed to be doing right now for them.
She walked over to the corner of the room to get more of the wedding favors. Before she could lift the carton of vases from the stack, a man stepped up beside her. She nearly jumped a foot in the air.
Then she froze, knowing it was Tyler and refusing to look at him. Yet, without even a glance in his direction, she picked up so many of the same details she had tried not to notice at the dining room table. So many memories from their brief time together.
From the corner of her eye, she caught the scuffed and creased cowboy boots. The well-worn jeans. The snapped cuff of a long-sleeved Western shirt. With one breath, she took in the scent of musky aftershave and of the man himself. Standing so close to him, she couldn’t miss the heat of his body. She forced herself to remember that warmth was only on the surface and didn’t touch his heart.
“So,” he said, “you’re helping out the Garlands this afternoon, too?”
“I work here,” she corrected.
“You gave up the job at the Big Dipper?”
She shook her head and finally glanced at him. “No, I’m doubling up. I’m working my way up to banquet manager for the hotel.” She hoped for that, anyhow. With the babies on the way, she needed more money than she made now.
“Nice.” He sounded impressed.
Good. Let him see she didn’t need anything from him.
“Hey, I’ll give you a hand.” He grabbed the carton. Glass clinked.
“Careful,” she snapped, half out of annoyance at herself for taking so much of him in, the other half out of irritation at his thinking she needed help—or anything else—from him. “Those are fragile.”
Eyebrows raised, he eyed her middle as if to say the same applied to her.
She crossed her arms, intending to stand her ground and stare him down, but the large baby bump made the stance awkward. She lowered her hands to her sides.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I don’t make a habit of dropping things.”
“Oh, really? I’d have said you were an expert at it.” She could have bitten her tongue at the instinctive response, but even that pain wouldn’t have come close to the way he had hurt her.
“What does that mean?”
It was too much to hope he would have just let her statement slide. But why should she let him slide when he had treated her so badly? “Sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that.” She kept her voice down, but still, nerves and anger made her pitch high and her tone arch. “I really don’t know how you are about dropping things. But I sure know how you are about dropping women, since you did such a great job of that with me.”
Abruptly, he shifted the carton. Glass clinked again, and this time she was too annoyed to care. How could he sound so offhand after what he had done?
“I didn’t drop you,” he said. “You knew I was only in town a few days for the wedding. While I was here, we had a good time together, and that was it. I didn’t make any promises.” He looked at her stomach. “Besides, you obviously didn’t waste any time moving on to someone else.”
She swallowed a gasp. He couldn’t possibly think she had slept with him one night and then gone on to someone else the next. Then again, considering how quickly she had wound up in bed with him, why wouldn’t he think that?
As for not wasting time... If he only knew how many sleepless nights she had spent since he had left, especially once she found out she was pregnant. But he wouldn’t know, and she had to stop thinking about that. He had already stolen too much time from her, had already hurt her enough.
“Don’t worry,” he said in a lower tone, “I’m not planning to say anything about what happened last summer. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“My—” The sound of footsteps made her cut herself off. This time she turned. One sneak attack was enough—although no one could have startled her more than Tyler had.
Tina was coming toward them from across the room.
Shay glanced in Tyler’s direction and gestured to the table she had set up. “You can put the carton over there. Thanks.” She forced a smile.
He locked gazes with her. She refused to be the first to look away, which left her staring into his midnight-blue eyes. To her dismay, her stomach did that funny little flip it had taken such a short time to learn months ago.
“Tyler,” Tina said, “thanks so much for agreeing to help us all out. I think Jane’s trying to flag you down. Would you mind giving her and the waitresses a hand with the banquet tables?”
“Sure.” He glanced toward the other side of the room. Then he nodded to them both and ambled away.
Shay tried not to stare after him. She didn’t care where he was going or what he was doing, as long as it wasn’t near her. Let him think what he wanted about her pregnancy, too. She didn’t have to correct his assumption.
