Willow in Bloom Read online

  He was going to hope his memory came back on its own, and trust in destiny to take care of the rest.

  Candy Wood returned to ask if he wanted anything else, and left his check when he said he didn’t.

  And as Tyler paid the bill, he marveled all over again at how relieved he was that she hadn’t turned out to be the mystery woman.

  And that was when it struck him that no matter who she turned out to be, if he ever actually did find the mystery woman she would have a very long way to go to compare with Willow.

  At least in his eyes.

  To say Willow was nervous about taking Tyler to her family barbecue was an understatement. She couldn’t have been more nervous if she were about to undergo brain surgery.

  And not only was she stressed about how her brothers might act with Tyler, about how they might treat him, she was also stressed about what to wear.

  Normally she would have shown up at something like this in jeans and an oversize T-shirt—completely sexless tomboy clothes.

  She didn’t ever want Tyler to see her like that, but she knew that dressing in anything she did want him to see her in would only compound things with her brothers. And in the process, make it worse for Tyler. Not to mention opening the door to a rash of teasing remarks for herself, too.

  It was all just so complicated, and there was a part of her that couldn’t help regretting the impulse she’d acted on when she’d invited him to this gathering.

  Of course, if she hadn’t acted on that impulse she wouldn’t have been able to see him today, and she wouldn’t have liked that, either.

  In any case, depending on what happened between herself and Tyler when it came out that she was pregnant, she wanted some sort of groundwork laid with her family. She wanted them to at least have met him.

  But with only fifteen minutes before he picked her up, she didn’t have time to worry, she just had to pick out something to wear and put it on.

  Thoughts of Tyler and wanting to wow him prevailed, and she grabbed a pair of white Capri pants and a teal-blue, spandex tank top.

  On went the slacks. Then on went the tank top, and she stopped short as she looked at herself in the full-length mirror.

  Her breasts had gone up a cup size by the time she’d made it to the doctor to confirm her pregnancy. But almost overnight they seemed to have grown at least one size more. She was nearly voluptuous, and it amazed her.

  She took a long look from the front, then turned to the side and stared at herself from that angle, thinking that she could wow just about anybody with those puppies.

  It was great.

  But it was the last thing she wanted her brothers to notice about her.

  Still, she was so thrilled to have a fuller, more womanly body that she just couldn’t make herself take off the tank top. After all, it wouldn’t be long before her middle would be expanding at an even more rapid rate and ruin the effect.

  But what she could do was cover up a little, she decided.

  So she grabbed a white cotton blouse to wear over the tank top and her wonderful new bustline, leaving the blouse unbuttoned and untucked so there was only the slightest hint of what was underneath.

  Then she hurried to apply blush and mascara—hoping her brothers wouldn’t notice that, either—and brushed her hair, leaving it to hang loose and falling over her shoulders so that it, too, camouflaged her new profile.

  The doorbell rang as she was putting on lipstick—also lightly—and the butterflies in her stomach took wing all over again.

  “Please don’t let this be a disaster,” she said to no one in particular as she went to open the door.

  Tyler was standing on the landing outside, and the minute he saw Willow, his handsome, clean-shaven face lit up with a smile that made any risk she was taking seem worth it.

  He was dressed simply in cowboy boots, a pair of black jeans and a gray Henley T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. But he couldn’t have looked any better in a tuxedo. The jeans were just tight enough to accentuate the thick-muscled thighs that had no doubt come from years of gripping the sides of bucking broncos, and the T-shirt hugged his broad shoulders, powerful pectorals and beautiful biceps like the caress Willow’s hands were instantly itching to bestow.

  “Sorry if I’m late,” he was saying when Willow caught up from the time-delay of looking at him. “I ran some bushels of apples over to the general store on my way.”

  “That’s okay, I wasn’t ready myself,” she said, pushing the screen open for him. “Come on in. I just have to grab the batch of brownies I made for dessert and we can go.”

  “You look great, by the way,” he said to her back as she went to the counter to get the platter piled with decadent chocolate confections.

  The compliment puffed out her chest even more as she spun around to face him again. “You, too,” she said, meaning it.

  Tyler held the screen open for her this time, pulling the main door closed behind them as they both stepped out onto the landing.

  “Shall we walk or drive to this one?” he asked then.

  “Drive. The ranch is about twenty minutes outside of town.”

  Tyler’s truck was parked at the curb at the bottom of the steps, and he made sure to open that door for her, too, taking the dish of brownies from her while she got in, and returning them once she had.

  She indulged in watching him when he rounded the front of the truck, appreciating the sight of his very straight back and that perfect derriere. That perfect derriere that she’d once seen bare…

  But that was the last thing she wanted to be thinking about. Especially since she could feel her nipples hardening in response, and that would never do.

  She steadfastly continued to stare out the windshield as he got behind the wheel, willing her mind to keep to a more appropriate path and her nipples to calm down. Which wasn’t easy, since they suddenly seemed so ultrasensitive she thought she could feel every fiber of the tank top against them.

  “Where to?” Tyler asked after he’d started the engine and put the truck into gear.

  Willow was grateful that he seemed completely unaware of the effect he was having on her, and gave him directions, still without so much as glancing at him.

  Luckily, he was busy pulling away from the curb, and didn’t seem to notice that, either.

  “Is this barbecue for a special occasion?” he asked as he maneuvered the streets of Black Arrow.

  “It’s for my cousin Jesse. He’s an agent with the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “He’s an interesting guy. And since he’s home for a visit right now we all wanted to get together to see him.”

  “So I’m up against four brothers and a cousin?”

  “Five cousins. Although one of them is a girl, so she shouldn’t give you any trouble. And my cousin Billy is out of the country.”

  “Eight guys are going to want to string me up for being with you?” Tyler said with a chuckle that still sounded undaunted.

  If her brothers and her cousins all knew Tyler had gotten her pregnant, that might actually be the case. But since they didn’t, she said, “My brothers can always count on my cousins’ help if they want it, but usually—”

  “They don’t need it,” he guessed.

  Willow laughed. “Well, no, they don’t usually need it. But what I was going to say was that my cousins don’t have a thing about me actually seeing someone of the opposite sex. In fact, they’ve been known to give my brothers a hard time about always sticking their noses into my business.”

  “But it doesn’t help?”

  “My brothers just think they’re looking out for their little sister, and no one ever manages to make them see it any differently.”

  They’d arrived at the ranch by then, and Tyler found a place to park in front of the patrol car.

  “I guess this’ll be interesting,” he said, incl
ining his head in a kind of shrug. “Any words to the wise before we go in?”

  “Don’t touch me.” Not an order she wanted to give, when having Tyler touch her was something she seemed to be craving more and more each time she saw him. “If you even take my hand for some reason or pat my arm they’ll consider it pawing me and be all over you.”

  “Okay. No touching.”

  “And don’t call me Will.”

  “Is that your request or is that a suggestion because of your brothers?”

  “Both. They’ll say you’re trying to be one of us when you aren’t one of us, and it’ll tick them off.”

  “I wouldn’t call you Will, anyway. Anything else?”

  “Once a guy I went out to dinner with tried to feed me a bite of potato salad and ended up with a full plate of food in his lap.”

  “I won’t try to feed you. Anything else?”

  “That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Specifically, anyway.”

  “So I should just keep my distance.”

  “Not too much distance,” she heard herself say before she realized she was going to.

  It made Tyler smile a sexy smile that said he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Not too much distance. Got it,” he said, as if confirming a command. Then he said, “Is it safe to go in now?”

  “I don’t know about safe, but I guess we probably should.”

  Tyler got out of the truck and came around to open her door, taking the brownies from her but not offering her a hand to help her down.

  It was a silly thing, since Willow didn’t need his help, but she felt a twinge of resentment toward her brothers for the omission that had surely come as a response to the no-touching rule.

  Once she was out of the truck, Tyler closed the door but kept hold of the brownies.

  “I can take those,” Willow assured him.

  But he pulled them out of her reach. “I might need them as weapons.”

  Willow laughed at his joke, but thought that he didn’t know how right he might be.

  She led the way into the house without knocking or even calling hello. The living room was empty, but they could hear voices coming from the rear, and that’s where she headed.

  Her aunt Alice was there with Jenna, Willow’s cousin Sky, plus her new sister-in-law Kerry and Kerry’s three-year-old daughter, Peggy, who was busy chasing an ice cube across the floor.

  Willow introduced Tyler to her aunt, her cousin and Jenna, as well as to the woman her brother Jared had fallen in love with when Peggy had slipped into a drainage system he had been working on that summer. Jared had rescued the little girl, and he and Kerry had married soon after.

  Tyler’s greetings from the women of the family were open and friendly as Alice took the brownies from him and Jenna got him a beer. But then Bram came in from the backyard and stopped dead in his tracks the minute he saw him.

  “I didn’t know you were bringing someone, Willow,” he said without taking his eyes off Tyler.

  It was not a warm welcome. Especially when it was accompanied by a scowl that would have been more fitting if Tyler had been holding them at gunpoint.

  “I thought it would be a good way for Tyler to meet a lot of people at once,” she explained.

  “Hello again,” Tyler interjected.

  For a moment Bram just went on giving him a hard stare. Then, in a less than friendly tone, he said, “Tyler, isn’t it?” as if he wasn’t sure about the name.

  “You know it is,” Jenna said with a scolding edge in her voice.

  Still without taking his eyes off Tyler, Bram called over his shoulder, “Ashe. Jared. Logan. You want to come in here a minute? There’s someone who wants to meet you,” he said facetiously.

  “Bram…”

  Both Willow and Jenna said it at the same time. But part warning, part impatient tones that harmonized together didn’t faze the sheriff. He just went on pinning Tyler in place with cold eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Tyler said, as if he wasn’t at all concerned about holding his own. “I do want to meet your brothers.”

  Whether that was true or not, in came Willow’s other three brothers, to stand like a wall with Bram and bore into Tyler with their eyes.

  “Tyler, these are my brothers,” Willow said with a sigh, pointing as she named them each in turn. “Guys, this is Tyler Chadwick. He just moved into the old Harris place.”

  “And he’s our guest,” Jenna added pointedly.

  None of them said so much as a hello. But again Tyler ignored their intimidating rudeness and stepped forward to shake their hands.

  Each of her brothers hesitated before accepting, letting him know through the process that they were really only pacifying the women who were looking on.

  But even that didn’t seem to disturb Tyler. He merely met their stares and waited them out, until each one of them shook his hand.

  It was excruciating for Willow, and the moment all her brothers had complied, she stepped up and said, “Let’s go out back so you can meet my great-grandfather and my uncle and the rest of my cousins.”

  “Okay,” Tyler agreed. Then, to her brothers, he said, “Nice to meet you all,” and stepped around them.

  “Sorry about that,” Willow said under her breath when they’d left them behind.

  “It’s pretty much what I expected. Except that I’m still in one piece. So don’t worry about it.”

  Willow appreciated the levity he put into that, and had the urge to take his hand, to squeeze it in thanks. But of course she couldn’t do that, and again felt a twinge of resentment for having to refrain.

  There were picnic tables set up out back where a large barbecue was already red-hot and ready to go.

  The rest of Willow’s cousins were gathered not far from the barbecue, and since they were nearest to the back door, too, Willow led Tyler to them and performed those introductions first.

  Unlike her brothers, Seth, Shane and Grey, and Jesse, the guest of honor, all offered Tyler a hand to shake and actually made congenial conversation before Willow urged him on to the picnic table where her uncle Thomas sat with George.

  Both older men stayed seated when they approached, and Willow knew her uncle and her great-grandfather liked that Tyler called them each “sir” when she introduced him, and shook their hands, too.

  They invited them to sit, and Willow’s cousin Jesse joined them, too.

  But they hadn’t chatted for long when Bram came to stand at the end of the table and glare at Tyler.

  “We need to talk about some private family business, so if you wouldn’t mind, you could go over and keep an eye on those burgers on the barbecue.”

  “You can talk to me another time, Bram,” Willow said through clenched teeth, before Tyler could respond.

  But Tyler still took her brother in stride. “That’s okay. I’m happy to help,” he said amiably, getting up from the picnic bench.

  “Then I’ll help, too,” she said defiantly.

  But as she tried to get up, her big brother laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “This is important.”

  “Nothing’s that important.”

  “This is.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind,” Tyler assured her as he headed for the barbecue.

  “When are you going to grow up?” Willow snapped at her brother out of frustration.

  But Bram ignored the question and said, “I’ve filled Jesse in on what’s going on around here with Gloria’s letter and the deed. He’s on his way back to D.C., so he’s going to look into the trust fund and the property in Georgetown and report back.”

  “Good,” Willow said to her cousin. “It should help for us to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “I’m happy to help, too,” Jesse said, repeating Tyler’s words with an amused half smile.

  Something suddenly seemed to tickle their great-grandfather, because his weathered face erupted in a knowing smile as he nodded his head sagely, as if he were belatedly approving of the plan. />
  Then he said to Jesse, “It’s good you’ll be looking for the answers. The raven who seeks will find the heart’s truth.”

  Willow never knew quite what to say to those morsels of Comanche wisdom her great-grandfather spouted out of the blue.

  But they were all spared the need to comment when her aunt Alice came out the back door and saw Tyler running the barbecue.

  “Why is our guest doing the cooking?” she said loudly enough and in a sufficiently outraged tone that even Bram got to his feet in a hurry to take over.

  “He looked like the best man for the job,” Bram said, with an underlying derogatory note in his voice.

  Alice was having none of that, though. She said, “Mind your manners, Bram.” Then she hooked her arm through Tyler’s and brought him back to Willow’s side. “Guests of the Coltons don’t do the work around here. They just enjoy our company,” she proclaimed as she deposited Tyler on the picnic bench once more.

  The remainder of the evening was uneventful, but not entirely pleasant. It was difficult to enjoy it when only Logan—the more laid-back and jovial of her brothers—made any friendly overtures to Tyler, while the rest of her siblings watched him like hawks ready to pounce on their prey. Her other relatives went out of their way to be hospitable to blunt the effect, but it still couldn’t completely compensate, and as soon as it was polite, Willow suggested she and Tyler say good-night and leave.

  “I’m sorry for that,” she apologized for the second time as Tyler opened the truck door for her. “Every time I bring someone around them I hope they’ll have stopped the big brother routine. And tonight, since Bram and Jared are happily in love, I’d hoped that might lighten them up. But apparently not.”

  “It’s okay,” Tyler said, as if it really was. Then he got behind the wheel, started the engine and drove away from the ranch.

  The farther they got from it the more the tension of the evening seemed to ease. By the time they reached the Feed and Grain, Willow had relaxed enough to realize she wasn’t ready for her time with Tyler to come to an end yet. In fact, it was as if it hadn’t really begun.

  So, when Tyler parked at the curb, she said, “Let me buy you a glass of lemonade to make up for this.”