Willow in Bloom (14 page)

“Hey, are you okay?”

Willow hadn't heard Tyler come down the stairs and the sound of his voice startled her.

“Great, now I've scared you, too. I'm sorry,” he added, coming into the living room.

“It's okay.” She quickly pulled her hand from her middle and put it in her pocket.

“Did my lemonade make you sick?”

“No, why?”

“You were holding your stomach.”

“I'm fine. I was just snooping and you caught me at it,” she said, as if that explained the hand pressed to her middle.

“It's not snooping to look at pictures that are out on display.”

“They're nice,” she said, to change the subject.

“Thanks.”

“But you look so happy in the rodeo ones I'm surprised you've adjusted so well to not being able to do it anymore.”

“Who says I'm well adjusted?” he joked.

“You're not pouting.”

He laughed. “I'd get my rear end kicked if I was. Brick would never let me get away with that.”

“And you're always in a good mood.”

“Maybe it's the company I'm keepin',” he answered with a half smile that dimpled his cheek.

She wanted to accept the compliment, but her pleasure in it was dampened when she began to wonder one more thing. She began to wonder for the first time if being with her would help his attitude so much if he knew the truth about her. If he knew that they'd met before, spent the night together, and she was leaving him in the dark about it, leaving his memory blank when she could fill it in.

She was afraid he wouldn't be.

And worse yet, she was afraid that now, since she'd kept the truth from him, he might resent it when he realized it. When he realized that those good feelings she was helping him to have, those feelings she thought she might be arousing in him, were caused by someone who was essentially lying to him. Lying to him through omission if nothing else.

“Are you sure you're feeling okay? You don't have a drop of color in your cheeks. Maybe you should sit down,” he stated, taking a closer look at her.

“I think I just need food,” she said with forced brightness.

But apparently he bought it, because he just said, “Then we'd better get you some.”

Tyler took her glass and set it on a nearby table before he ushered her out the front door to his waiting truck.

But after he'd handed her up into the passenger side, closed the door and was headed around the front end, Willow had trouble shaking the anxious, foreboding sense she had.

Because the bottom line was that she'd deceived him the night they'd met, and she was deceiving him again now.

Which was hardly a good basis on which to begin a relationship.

And even noticing how wonderful Tyler looked all cleaned up and dressed in jeans and a pale-blue West
ern shirt didn't help chase away her concerns about the course she'd embarked on with him.

And the very real possibility that it might all blow up in her face.

 

Dinner did nothing to calm Willow's nerves.

Tyler took her to a local steak house that was packed to the brim, and no sooner had they walked in the door than she heard her name called.

She scanned the crowded restaurant and finally caught sight of who it was trying to get her attention.

And of all the people in Black Arrow who it could have been, she was not happy to find it was her brother Bram.

He and Jenna were sitting in the center of the place, and Willow and Tyler had no choice but to go over and say hello.

Which was when Bram invited them to join him and Jenna rather than waiting for another table to open up.

Willow and Tyler didn't have much choice, so they took the two empty seats at the table and began what was essentially a grilling of Tyler by Bram.

It left Willow wishing her brother would have done more of what he'd done the previous evening, when all of her brothers had spent more time glaring at Tyler than talking to him. As it was, the meal couldn't end soon enough for her.

“I think the ice cream is going to have to be my treat to make up for that,” she said when they finally got away from Bram the Interrogator and were back
in Tyler's truck, headed away from the restaurant. “I didn't know my brother would be there tonight. I saw him just before I came to your place, but he didn't say anything about going out for dinner.”

“It's okay,” Tyler assured her, still in good humor and not nearly as ruffled as Willow was. “And the ice cream idea was mine, so I'm still buying. But what do you say we just get a pint to go and hide out at your apartment to eat it?”

“So we don't risk running into any more of my brothers and having to spend the rest of our evening with them? Good idea.”

Tyler didn't confirm or deny her assumption, he just drove to the local ice cream parlor, where they decided on chocolate mousse ice cream with swirls of peanut butter through it, and counted themselves lucky to have run into only three people Willow knew, none of them her brothers.

The ice cream was melting badly when they finally reached the Feed and Grain again, and since church choir practice had left no parking spots nearby, Tyler let Willow off right at the foot of the steps to her apartment, while he went in search of an opening farther away.

Willow was just glad to be back without any further encounters with her brothers, and climbed the stairs in a hurry to get her cold confection to the freezer.

She fumbled with her keys, keeping the dripping container away from her as she did.

Then she stepped into her kitchen.

It was dark by then and she reached for the light switch.

But before she could flip it on, a beefy arm came around her neck from behind, clamping back on her windpipe and yanking her up against an unyielding body.

The ice cream container hit the floor as she grasped the arm at her throat with both hands. But the man was stronger than she was, and even clawing at his arm to pull it away didn't faze him.

“Just give me the documents and you won't get hurt.”

His hot breath smelled of onions and cigarettes, and her stomach lurched.

Willow didn't understand. Not what was going on. Not what he was saying. Nothing. She only struggled to breathe while her own pulse pounded like a jungle drum in her ears.

“I don't know—” she barely managed to gasp.

“The inheritance. I heard you found the papers for it. I want them. Now.”

His voice was low and threatening. His arm was still tight across her throat. And Willow's legs felt as if they might buckle at any moment.

“—don't have them—”

The arm pressed harder, squeezing off her airway even more. “Don't be stupid. Just tell me where they are.”

Tiny flickers of light flashed before her eyes and she thought she was going to pass out.

“—locked away…bank—”

There was pressure in her head. Ringing in her ears. Pain behind her eyes.

“Please…” she said as strongly as she could. “I can't breathe.”

Then all at once something exploded behind her with a jolt that knocked her forward, free of the vice-like arm.

Willow gasped for breath, belatedly realizing that the man hadn't just released her, that there was more going on.

She turned and found Tyler pinning the man to her kitchen floor, one knee in the middle of his back, one hand wrenching up on the arm that had been around her neck, his other hand pressing the man's face into her linoleum.

“Are you all right?” Tyler demanded of her, his tone intense.

“I think so,” she said in a feeble, raspy voice.

“Then get your brother over here before I make this guy sorry he was ever born.”

 

The man was Kenny Randolph. Willow recognized him from the night she'd seen Bram talking to him after the carnival.

Once she'd called her brother, Tyler insisted she wait for Bram outside, where she was safe, while he kept Randolph restrained in her kitchen.

Bram and two of his deputies arrived fifteen minutes after her call. As the deputies went up to her apart
ment, Bram stayed with Willow, making sure she was all right and then asking what had happened.

Willow kept her arms wrapped around herself the whole time she gave her statement. It was the only way she could keep her hands from shaking, and she didn't want her brother to see that they were.

Then the deputies brought Randolph out, followed close behind by Tyler, and as Bram helped to put Randolph in one of the patrol cars, Tyler joined Willow.

Without a word he enveloped her in his strong arms and pressed her head to his chest, apparently not caring what his actions might set off in her brother.

And at that moment Willow didn't care, either.

She just let herself drink in the comfort of Tyler's big, solid body, because that hug was exactly what she needed.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly, his breath a tiny gust in her hair.

“Thanks to you.”

“I came upstairs and couldn't figure out why you hadn't turned on a light. Then, just as I got to the screen door, I saw you. You and that son of a…that guy.”

“It's a good thing we didn't go in together,” she said, her cheek still pressed to his pectorals.

“Your place is pretty torn up. He must have been ransacking it for a while before we got there,” Tyler said, as if to warn her before she saw the place lighted.

“He was looking for something—documents I found the other day, which my grandmother left.
We've inherited a trust fund and some sort of property in Washington, D.C., and he wanted the papers to prove it. He wanted me to hand them over to him. But I didn't have them to give him. Bram took them to put in the safe at the bank.”

“Word leaked that you'd found the deed, but not that the papers were out of your hands, which was just what I was afraid of.”

It was Bram's voice filling in that detail. He was close enough to have heard them talking, even though Willow hadn't known her brother had rejoined them.

She didn't want to leave Tyler's arms, but she raised her head from his chest anyway and moved away from him.

And when she did she found her brother with a dark scowl on his face, whether because of the events of the evening or because of Tyler, she couldn't be sure.

“That's why I wanted you to come to my place to stay,” Bram added.

“At least you have him in custody now,” Willow reasoned. “Maybe you'll be able to get to the bottom of everything else.”

Bram still didn't look happy.

But even so he angled his gaze toward Tyler and said, “Thanks for doing what you did.”

Tyler waved it off as if he hadn't done anything. “I'm just glad I was here.”

It didn't seem as if Bram wanted to go quite that far. Instead he looked at Willow again and said,
“You'd better come home with me. Your place is a wreck.”

Willow shook her head, thinking as she had when her brother had wanted her to stay with him before that her morning sickness would be a dead giveaway if she did. “The real danger is over. I'll be fine here. But how did Randolph get in?”

“Through the back door to the store. Looks like he jimmied open the lock with a crowbar. One of my men boarded it up. We'll have to get it fixed in the morning. But that's another reason not to stay here tonight.”

Willow still wouldn't agree, and with Kenny Randolph and both deputies waiting for him, Bram couldn't argue for long. He finally had to concede.

“I'll send a patrol car by here every twenty minutes all night long,” he said then. “But if you get nervous, just call and I'll come get you.”

“I will,” she assured him, without much conviction.

Bram thanked Tyler again and left, but not without a backward glance at the two of them, as if he wasn't any more pleased to be leaving Willow alone with Tyler than to be leaving her alone at all.

Once they had watched Bram and the deputies drive off, Tyler said, “Come on. I'll help you clean up.”

Willow knew she should decline the offer. Tyler had done enough. But since the last thing she wanted was to go up to that apartment by herself, she said a simple,
“Thanks,” of her own and led the way back up the stairs.

She was surprised to find herself reluctant to go in when she got to the landing, though. Suddenly she had a flash of what had happened, of stepping through the door and being grabbed from behind.

Maybe her fear showed on her face, because as she stood there staring at the door rather than going through it, Tyler took her hand and said, “It's okay now, but let's go in together, anyway.” And then he opened the screen and went in first.

In the commotion, Willow hadn't realized just what a mess her apartment was. But that initial glance around shocked her.

The ice cream had opened when she'd dropped it, splattering everywhere and then melting into a puddle. Cupboard doors were open and shelves spilled their contents. Drawers were pulled completely out of their slots. Her pantry looked as if it had suffered an avalanche.

And apparently that was only the beginning, because when she looked out into the living room she could see furniture upturned, pillows and cushions everywhere, tables tossed aside, lamps on their sides on the floor, even one curtain rod pulled from the wall and left hanging at half-mast.

Again Tyler must have seen how overwhelmed she was, because he squeezed her hand and said, “It looks worse than it is. We'll get it all put back together in no time.”

Then he let go of her, high-stepped over the debris in the kitchen and went into the living room to prove it by setting to work righting her sofa and replacing the cushions.

It still took Willow a moment to gather her wits, but when she finally did she started on the ice cream mess. When that was cleaned up she went on to replacing drawers and what was in them.

She moved as if through a haze, trying not to think about the stranger who had been in her apartment, who had gone through her things, who had terrified her. And before too long she and Tyler managed to do exactly what he'd promised—they'd put the place back together.