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That was such a mild term for how she remembered it. After she told him she was pregnant and he broke up with her, his parents then went and offered her parents a thousand dollars for her to have an abortion. No, she wouldn’t have classified that under ‘not great.’ More like horrific.
She smiled at him faintly. “I’m working, Travis.”
Though she used his first name to placate him, he still scowled. “I’m not part of your job description, dammit. Talk to me.”
Frank irritation seized her before she managed to flash her polite smile, the effort felt as if she was stretching the flesh on her cheeks, like pulling on a pair of tight, latex gloves. “This is the wrong time and place for me to have a personal conversation.”
“Then when? Where? I want to see you again. There are too many unresolved issues between us. I want…I want to make amends.”
Amends.
The word filtered through her like butterfly wings, fluttering hope into her system and beating madly through her pulse.
She looked at him—looked at him as she would not like the perfect hostess to look at any guest attending one of her employers’ parties. But he was right. Too many unresolved issues lay between them. And she couldn’t hide from them forever. She wanted to be able to think about the past without feeling sick to her stomach with shame. She wanted to resolve all
the unsettled problems so she could continue with the rest of her life without the slightest hitch of remorse.
She wanted those amends made.
After a quick, uncertain tug on her lip with her teeth, she asked, “Are you going to the class reunion next week?”
He frowned, clearly confused. “Class reunion?”
“Our ten-year class reunion is next week at Tommy Creek’s high school.” She rolled her eyes as if she believed it to be a silly event, which actually she did. “I know Em and I missed out on most of our senior year, but they invited us anyway. Will I see you there?”
“I…” His face appeared absolutely befuddled. “I hadn’t even planned on it. But…” Intense hazel eyes latching onto her, he said, “If you’re going, then I will most definitely see you there.”
She nodded and was never so glad to hear the doorbell gong. Squeezing Travis’s arm with an affectionate grasp, she started past him. “Then I’ll talk to you there. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
As she moved away, she felt him watching her, his stare burrowing into the back of her spine. Doom settled around her, and it wasn’t because she had to open the door to let in more heat.
She was going to return to Tommy Creek. She was going to return to her past, and to Travis, and everything else she’d been emotionally running from for the past ten years.
Too many loose ends dangled before her. She feared going back, feared taking on all the problems that should’ve been fixed by now. But Emma Leigh had begged and prodded until she’d given in. And now it was time to face her past.
Chapter Eight
With the corn stalks in his fields grown to full height and their green stems beginning to turn a ripe golden brown, Cooper knew his busy season was about to erupt. He’d give it another week before it was time to pick, load grain, store each bushel in bins, keep the driers working, and fix all the equipment which would no-doubt break on him. That was if the sun didn’t kill off his crop before it was ready. He’d lost a quarter of his corn already when he’d had to divert his water supply from one field to another so he could at least have some decent output.
Before all hell broke loose and picking began, he decided enjoying himself on a night out would do him a world of good. He cleaned up after supper, escaped his mother, and headed into town. Driving straight to the only tavern within a fifty-mile radius, he settled himself at the bar and ordered a brew off the tap. Listening to outdated music people played on the jukebox, he propped his cowboy boots onto the bottom rung of the stool next to him, leaned his back against the wall, and started a friendly conversation with Rio, the bartender.
“I keep telling you, Coop, you need to set up some deer blinds, put out a few corn feeders and turn your ground into one of them huntin’ ranches. You’d make a decent guide, and I hear those fellers rake in the cash. Shoot, that guide service down south of here charges half a grand just to give people permission to hunt on their land. You got enough feral hogs running wild on your place, you certainly wouldn’t be begging for business.”
Rubbing at his face, Coop let out a tired sigh. “You forget, Rio. It’s not my ground to do with as I please.”
“Aww, shoot, Coop. Come on now. Thad don’t know no difference anymore. And hell, I told him when he was working on all four cylinders he was crazy for still growing crops in this part of the state, all dried up and stale as it is.”
“My granddaddy was a dirt farmer, and my father was a dirt farmer. It’s only right for me to keep up the tradition.”
“Ain’t no money in following tradition,” Rio grumbled as he moodily flung a well-worn drying towel over his shoulder after cleaning a beer mug and putting it back on the shelf.
Cooper held in a grin, realizing Rio had just projected his own problems onto Cooper since he’d inherited this very bar from his daddy and was struggling to turn a profit. Following tradition, indeed.
“Well, I suspect there’s worse things than being poor and traditional.” He tipped his beer up for a drink and paid no mind to the two fancy couples who strolled into the joint, vaguely noticing one of the ladies was round with pregnancy.
“I thought you were taking us to a restaurant,” the pregnant woman’s escort paused just inside the entrance as he frowned around the place, “not a bar.” He scowled at the non-pregnant gal tucked up under the other man’s arm. “Seriously? You brought my pregnant wife into a bar?”
“It’s a bar and grill. Trust me, they have great ribs. I can’t help it if they sell alcohol and maybe have a couple of pool tables with some dartboards. And—Oh my Gawd!” Ripping herself away from her man, the woman lifted her hands to her eyes as if she needed to shade them from the sun to see better, though the dim interior was plenty shaded enough. “Coop? Cooper Thaddeus Gerhardt, is that you?”
