Lassoed by Fortune

CHAPTER Fifteen


Five days went by. Five long, agonizing days that seemed to drag by in slow motion, leaving long, jagged, painful scars in their wake.

Julia found she had trouble concentrating. It wasn’t that she would drift off; it was more a case of her mind going blank with nothing for her to catch hold of. That, at least, was more merciful than other moments when she would berate herself for being such a fool. For being so incredibly na?ve.

She’d been smarter, she told herself as despair would start to fill every nook and cranny in her being, when she had been in high school than she was now. Back in high school, she’d made a point of deflecting Liam’s attention that time it had been directed at her.

Granted, when he had asked her out, it hadn’t really come across as a full-fledged attack on her defenses, but at the time she’d been more than relatively inexperienced. And yet she’d been smart enough to say “No” to him when all the other girls in school had cried a breathless “Yes!”

She might secretly have been a little miffed when he didn’t try to get her to change her mind and had just shrugged in response to her rejection, but she’d been proud of herself then. Proud of the fact that she hadn’t just followed the crowd like some brainless lemming and gloried in whatever small crumb of attention Liam would have been willing to give her at the time.

The bottom line was that she’d been discerning and she had made her mark on him by being the only one who’d turned him down, the one who hadn’t worshipped at his feet.

And where did that get her? Years of unconsciously wondering what it might have been like to be with him? Being ripe for his romantic advances when they finally materialized in full force? That didn’t exactly seem like much of a triumph to her.

And now what?

Now that she felt like a hollowed-out shell of her former self, what exactly was she to do with herself? Now that she knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of his touch, his kiss, his exquisite lovemaking, where did she go from here?

How did she go on knowing that the very best was behind her and that she had nothing but emptiness in front of her?

Frustrated, Julia wiped back one offending tear, silently forbidding herself from shedding any more.

A lot of good that did, she thought unhappily. She was just grateful they had closed for the evening and that there were no customers to witness her meltdown.

No one, that is, except for her mother.

Julia turned her head away, hoping her mother hadn’t noticed the telltale tears before she had a chance to wipe them away.

But she should have known better. Her mother was one of those legendary eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head mothers and was almost always one step ahead of her.

“I hate seeing you like this,” Annie told her, her voice throbbing with sympathy. She had given Julia five days to deal with whatever was going on in her life, but she couldn’t bear it any longer and broke her silence as they closed up the store. “Maybe if you tried to talk to him—”

“No!” Julia snapped, then flushed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you,” she said in apology. “But really, Mom, I’m fine.”

“No,” her mother replied quietly but firmly, “you’re not.” She pointed out the difference. “When your marriage to Neal ended, you were fine. A little sad, yes, but you mustered on just as I knew you would. You didn’t look the way you do now—”

Carrying the dairy products to the refrigerator in the storeroom, Julia sighed. “Mother, you’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m observing,” Annie corrected. “And if anything, I’m understating the situation.

“You and Liam looked good together. Were good together,” her mother stressed. “Some mothers sense things like that,” she explained, “and I sensed it about the two of you.”

Yeah, well, it was an act, all an act, Julia thought. And she, and her mother apparently, had fallen for it.

“He fooled us all, Mother. Liam is a very good actor.”

But Annie shook her head. Her still vibrant red hair was cut short and swished around her face as if to underscore the sentiment she expressed.

“Not that good, Julia. My vision isn’t colored by a desire for you to marry well or to nab a wealthy husband. My only, only requirement was—and is—for you to follow your heart, which was why I wasn’t all that overjoyed when you told me you were marrying Neal.”

The corners of Julia’s mouth curved sadly. She’d expected her mother to be overjoyed by the news that she was going to marry the affable lawyer. Seeing sadness in her mother’s eyes had only confused her.

“I remember,” Julia said quietly.

“I liked Neal,” Annie insisted. “He was a nice boy and he was obviously taken with you, but I knew that while you might have even talked yourself into loving him, you weren’t in love with him and that, my darling daughter, makes a world of difference.” She looked up into her daughter’s eyes, trying to make her understand. “Julia, I’m not the wisest woman in the world, but I could see that you were in love with Liam—and you still are.”

Denial quickly rose up in her throat and was hot on her lips, but Julia gave up the lie before she ever uttered a word. She knew there was no point to it. So instead, she shrugged, silently acknowledging her mother’s statement.


“I’ll get over it.”

“I don’t want you to get over it,” Annie insisted, closing the refrigerator door with a little too much force. “I want you to act on it. Love is not all that common. It doesn’t happen to everyone. And if it happens to you, you should make the most of it. Grab it with both hands and hang on for dear life.”

Julia sighed again, struggling hard to keep from crying. “Mom, it’s over. If Liam felt anything remotely close to what you’re describing, he’d be over here, banging on my door, demanding to talk to me, demanding we work things out.”

She pressed her lips together before going on.

“If you listen closely, you’ll see that there’s no banging, no demanding going on. There’s nothing. It was all a charade, an act. And now it’s over. He’s gone. And I have a life to live.”

Pausing for a moment, she kissed her mother’s cheek. “Thanks for worrying, Mom, but please stop. That CHAPTER of my life is closed. Now, I need to get some rest because I’m meeting with Wendy and her husband tomorrow. They said they wanted to talk to me about managing their restaurant.” This was supposed to be one of the best moments of her life, better than she’d initially hoped. But she felt dead inside. Julia forced a smile to her lips. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been, she couldn’t help thinking as she took her mother’s hand. “This is my dream, Mom. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Be happy for me.”

Annie squeezed her daughter’s hand. She knew better, but right now, there was no point in beating this dead horse. “If that’s what you want, Julia, then yes, of course, I’m happy for you.”

But it was a lie.

Neither one of them was really happy.

* * *

“You going to hide in here forever?” Toby chided as he walked into Liam’s stable the next morning.

Toby and his brothers and sisters had all gotten together to discuss their concern about the state of Liam’s surliness as well as his withdrawal from sight for almost a week. When it came to the topic of which of them would approach Liam about the matter, they decided to draw straws.

As luck—or lack thereof—would have it, Toby had gotten the short one. That meant that it was up to him to approach Liam about it as well as to try to get him to abandon this hermitlike existence and get back into the game of life.

“I’m not hiding,” Liam retorted. He didn’t spare his brother a single glance. Instead he just went on brushing his horse.

“Nobody’s seen you since the day after the vote was taken at the meeting—the day that somebody ran off at the mouth and started that stupid rumor about you trying to get Julia to see your way by seducing her,” Toby pointed out.

“It’s called working, Toby,” Liam snapped at his brother. “I’ve been working. You should try it sometime.”

“I work plenty, Liam,” Toby reminded him patiently. “I run my ranch and I’m taking care of three kids and once in a while, I get to sleep for an hour or two. But we’re not talking about me, Sunshine,” Toby said sarcastically, “we’re talking about you. Everyone in the family is worried about you. Nobody’s seen you at the saloon and Stacey said you blew her off when she suggested meeting her at The Grill two days ago. She left a message on your machine. You never called her back.”

Liam shrugged off the accusation. “Like I said, I’ve got work.”

From what Toby could see, Liam might have work, but he hadn’t done any of it. Except for one thing. “From the looks of it, you’ve groomed your horse to death, but the rest of the place looks like it’s going to seed.”

“If you’re here to nag me, I’d just as soon you save your breath, turn around and ride back,” Liam told him with finality. He might as well have flashed a no-trespassing sign at his brother for all the friendliness in his tone.

“Can’t,” Toby replied flatly.

Liam stopped grooming his stallion and fixed his brother with a look. “Why not?”

“’Cause,” Toby said very simply, “I drew the short straw.”

Liam narrowed his eyes, fixing his younger brother with a penetrating look. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Toby went for the literal interpretation. “It means that we all drew straws to see who was going to come out to talk to you and I got the short one.”

Liam could only stare at him in disbelief. “You drew straws,” he repeated incredulously.

“Yeah,” Toby replied. “Nobody likes talking to you when you’re like this.”

“Like what?” Liam challenged darkly.

“Angrier than a wet hen trying to peck at his dinner using a rubber beak.”

Despite himself, Liam laughed a beat before his scowl returned. “Now there’s an image,” he mused. Then he sobered and looked at Toby. “Well, you talked to me. So you can go home now.”

It didn’t work that way, even though Liam’s suggestion was tempting. “I’m not supposed to just talk. I’m supposed to get through to you,” Toby explained. “Not that that’s easy to do, given your thick skull.”

“And just what is it that you’re trying to ‘get through’ my thick skull?” he demanded. “What bits of wisdom are you and the others in possession of that you think you need to ‘share’ with me?” His voice fairly dripped of sarcasm.

This was a different Liam than the one Toby had grown up with and he didn’t much care for this version. “That you’re behaving like a jackass.”

Liam set his jaw hard before answering. “Great. You’ve delivered the message. Now go,” he ordered, trying not to lose his temper.

Toby and the rest of his family had no idea what he was going through and he wanted to handle recovering from it in his own way, not submitting to being burned by their “good intentions.”

Toby refused to give up—or leave. Besides, he wasn’t finished yet. “And that Julia Tierney’s the best thing that ever happened to your sorry ass and if you don’t do anything to get her back, you’re even dumber than I thought you were.”

Though he didn’t want to, Liam had to grudgingly admit that Toby had good intentions, even if he had his signals crossed.

“Put down your arrows, Cupid, there’s nothing to ‘get back.’ Julia was playing me, trying to keep me distracted so that the vote for her precious restaurant would go through.” He shrugged, pretending that what he was saying no longer hurt. “The second it did, she dropped me like a hot potato.”

Toby frowned. “That’s not the way I heard it.”

“Well, that’s the way it was,” Liam told him flatly. “She told me that she played me. There was no point in hanging around after that.”

“And you believed her?” Toby questioned incredulously.

Liam narrowed his eyes angrily. “Why shouldn’t I believe her? There was no point in her lying to me about that.”

Toby stared at him. Was he serious? “Are you familiar with the concept of saving face?”

Liam’s scowl deepened. “What’s your point?”

Toby tried to explain it as simply as he could. “Rumors are bouncing around all over the place that you were looking to get her to see things your way and you weren’t above seducing her to make that happen. She hears that and then you show up at her store, so she does what any normal human being would do to save face. She makes up a story about turning the tables on you so that she doesn’t come off being the butt of every joke for the next six months.”


It was a good enough explanation—but there was just one thing wrong with it. “But the vote went her way,” Liam insisted.

Toby dismissed the point. “That doesn’t mean that you didn’t have that plan up your sleeve. And with the vote going her way, she had something to build her lie on.” He could still see skepticism in Liam’s eyes. “Now, if you can’t see that, then you’re not nearly as bright as I always gave you credit for being.”

Toby addressed the last words to the back of Liam’s head as his brother went back to grooming his horse for the umpteenth time.

Liam didn’t bother commenting, or even grunting.

Toby stood there for another couple of minutes, waiting for some sort of a response, but Liam went on ignoring him.

Finally, Toby sighed.

“Well, I’ve got a life to get back to. I forgot how damn stubborn you could be when you put your mind to it. It’s like trying to dent a brick wall with a marshmallow,” he told Liam with disgust. “Just remember, when you wind up alone at the end of the day, you’ve only got yourself to blame. I tried.”

Liam went on maintaining his silence, grooming his horse as if he and the animal were the only two occupants inside the stable.

And eventually they were.

* * *

“Julia, please, sit down,” Marcos Mendoza requested, rising to his feet the moment Julia walked into the hotel suite.

Julia had driven to Vicker’s Corners to meet with Marcos and his wife since, as of yet, Horseback Hollow didn’t have its own hotel. But maybe it would, Julia thought, now that the first step toward expansion had been taken.

“I know you know Wendy, but you haven’t met our daughter, Mary Anne,” he said, gesturing toward the pretty little two-year-old with the animated face and lively dark eyes.

“Very pleased to meet you,” Mary Anne said, smiling up at her.

“You’ve got a little heartbreaker there,” Julia told the couple. There was a trace of longing in her voice. She had always loved children and try as she might, she didn’t see any in her future. Ever.

“Thank you, we like her,” Wendy said with a great deal of affection as her arms closed around the little girl who had climbed onto her lap.

“We can’t tell you how pleased we are to be building our restaurant in your town,” Marcos began. “And I know we have a great deal to talk about. So I thought that the most efficient way would be if I just came out and asked you for your input and suggestions right up front.” He smiled at her, not bothering to ask if she had any. His instincts about the young woman told him that she did. So he urged her on by saying, “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

For some reason, the moment he said that, Julia thought back to the two men she’d overheard talking the morning she’d stood staring at the sign announcing the site of the restaurant’s future home. The ones who had blown up her world.

One useful thing had come out of that hurtful exchange between the two men. “I was wondering if you’ve given any thought to changing the restaurant’s name.”

“The name?” he questioned. “You don’t like the way the Hollows Brasserie sounds?”

“Oh, I think it sounds lovely,” she told him quickly because she didn’t want to offend him and because she actually did like the name. “But the trouble is Horseback Hollow isn’t as cosmopolitan as Red Rock. Some people don’t know what the word means at all, or think it’s...well, a little lofty-sounding,” she said, substituting lofty for the word pretentious at the last minute, again in an effort not to offend the man. “I was thinking of perhaps calling it The Hollows Cantina, you know, in keeping with the local atmosphere.”

She watched Marcos’s face, holding her breath. After all, he was the boss and as such, had the final say in the restaurant’s name.

To her relief, he grinned after a moment, nodding. “Cantina,” he repeated. “I like it. Just proves that we were right in choosing you to work here. You know these people better than we do, obviously, and that can only work to all our advantages,” Marcos said, beaming.

Julia let go of the breath she’d been holding. At least some things were going her way, she thought with a touch of sadness.

And if her heart still felt as if there was a bullet hole smack in the center of it, well, she’d just go on ignoring that sensation until she finally stopped noticing it altogether.

Someday.

But not today.