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.“She’ll be back, just wait and see.”Tucker wanted Lori back.He wanted her with him, at his side, day to day.He wanted his ring on her finger.He wanted her last name to be his name.He wanted her there in his bed, every night, all womanly softness and tender caresses and sweet, sexy sighs.He wanted the taste of her mouth and the tiny, pleading cries she made when he loved her.He wanted to look across the dinner table and find her blue eyes waiting, the corners of her sweet mouth lifting in a come-and-get-it smile.And damn, did he ever want her steady hand with Brody.With Lori gone, it became instantly obvious that, when it came to Brody, someone had be the tough one, the one who said “no,” now and then.That job now fell to Tucker.He made it a point to say no almost as often as he told his son yes.Brody did seem to take it well.In a way, Brody seemed happier and more relaxed, now he understood that his dad was the boss.Still.It had been a hell of a lot more fun showering him with presents, promising him the moon, and watching his eyes light up every time Tucker came home from work with a new and outrageously expensive toy.Oh, yeah.Tucker missed Lori in a hundred ways.But to get her to come back to him, he had to forgive her.And he just couldn’t quite see his way clear to do that.Once or twice he’d considered calling her, faking it, telling her he loved her and he was over what she’d done.But it would have been a whopping lie and she would have caught him out in it eventually.He wasn’t over all the years she’d kept his son from him.He didn’t think he’d ever be.Every time he looked at Brody, the awareness of the truth she’d hid from him caused a hollow spot beneath his ribs, an emptiness carved out by the years he had lost, the years he hadn’t been there for Brody.Because of her.Okay, yeah.Maybe he did love her.Maybe he had no choice in that.He couldn’t stop himself from loving her.But there was a deep anger in the way he loved her, a bitter edge to his longing for her.Twice, Brody had called her from their hotel room in Anaheim.Tucker listened to his son chatter away, giving her blow-by-blow descriptions of all the rides and attractions—and he’d wanted to snatch the phone from Brody’s hands, to talk to her, tell her…What?He had to get past this.There was nothing to say.The minute they’d come in from the car on Sunday, Brody had called her again.Tucker forced himself to leave the room.There was no point in standing there, listening to Brody’s end of the conversation, furious and full of frustrated longing.It was better, he realized, just not to be there while Brody talked to her.The week crawled by.Enid took care of Brody Monday through Friday.She was kind to Tucker, inviting him in, offering him coffee or a cold drink.He always politely refused.To be in her house—the house where Lori had grown up—brought back old memories, vague remembrances of Lori as a teenager, when he’d hardly known she existed.She used to wear her hair pulled back, didn’t she? And she would smile at him, a hopeful, shy smile, when he came to see Lena.Looking back over those long-ago times, he felt so lonely, had such a grim sense of missed connections.She’d said she’d loved him, even then—or at least, she’d had a heavy-duty crush on him.What might have happened if he’d had the sense, then, to look twice?No.No point in what-ifs.And no way was he hanging out at Enid’s house.He’d drop Brody off at eight-thirty and pick him up at five and head straight for the ranch.Nights were the worst.With the workday over and Brody safely tucked into bed, Tucker was left alone, missing Lori, wanting to call her and demand that she come back to him, knowing such a stupid move would get him nowhere, fast.Friday night he joined his brother in Tate’s office for a whiskey and a little conversation.Big mistake.They’d barely poured their drinks and put their feet up when Tate started in on him, demanding to know what the hell was going on with Lori.“I thought you were planning to marry that woman.Hell, Tuck.What went wrong?”Tucker was just miserable enough by then to tell his brother everything—how he couldn’t forgive her for what she’d done, how he’d proposed anyway, but she’d turned him down.How she had some ridiculous idea that she couldn’t live with him and be happy until he could let go of his resentment toward her.Once the sad story was told, Tucker sat back, sipped his whiskey and waited for Tate to express a little brotherly sympathy.He waited for nothing.“What’s the deal?” Tate growled.“All of a sudden, you ain’t got the sense to spit downward? You better look back, little brother.Look back on your sorry self when you left this town.You couldn’t wait to shake the dust off your boots and get outta here.You say you would’ve stayed for Lori’s sake, if she’d only been straight with you? Well, all right.Maybe you would’ve.And in a month—maybe two—you would’ve been miserable.You were bound and determined to blow this town and get a good look at the world outside of Texas.Time would have come—and it wouldn’t have been long—when you would have been mad at that sweet woman for keepin’ you here.”Tucker tried to make his hardheaded brother see the light.“It’s not so much that she didn’t tell me at first, before she knew about Brody.It’s later.That’s what gets me.When she had my baby and she didn’t make the effort to—”Tate didn’t let him finish.“Okay.Say she’d tried harder to find you after Brody was born.What then?”Tucker sat up straighter.“I would have come home.”“Yeah? So? I’m not saying you wouldn’t have.You would have done right.I know that.You would have come home, married her, and settled down to play family man—when the last thing you were ready for back then was piles of dirty diapers and a young wife.How long d’you think that kind of marriage would have lasted?”“I would have—”Tate cut him off again
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