“So, I need some air.”
Kim led the way out of the room. Instead of going back to the main room, they went down the hall to the emergency exit at the end.
Outside, they walked a few feet along the side of the building. Carly settled on the low stone wall and reached behind it to pick up a couple of pebbles. “The Southwestern landscaping will come in handy for you. Don’t you have to fill my pockets with stones?”
“Carly.” She didn’t need to look to see Kim’s worried expression. “What’s going on?”
A few yards away, the Longhorn’s door swung open. Music and laughter swelled into the night.
As Kim settled on the wall beside her, Carly sighed. This conversation wasn’t going to be to her liking, she could tell.
“Inside,” Kim said, “I turned to say something to Sandra, turned back again and you were gone. So I went looking for you. Because you need to talk to me. And I’m done with sitting back and waiting for you to get to that conclusion. That’s what’s going on. Come on, girl, it’s me. Your BFF.” She gave Carly a nudge. “You do remember we’re best friends forever, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Tears made her eyes sting. “I don’t know where to start, Kim.”
“How about with the week before you and Luke had the fight?”
Now she did turn her head.
In the light of the streetlamp, Kim’s set jaw and grim expression matched her flat tone. But the glow in her friend’s eyes didn’t come from the lamplight.
“You knew something was up?”
Raising her brows, Kim looked at her without speaking.
“Sorry.” Carly stared into the distance, where the lights couldn’t breach the darkness. “There was a lot going on that week. And then, when Luke and I broke up, I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.”
“You fell to pieces,” her friend said gently. “You were good for nothing the rest of that summer, till you went away to school. And I’m worried it might happen again.”
She snapped her head in Kim’s direction. “Don’t worry. There’s not a chance of that.”
“Well, at least at this point, you’ve only started to crumble around the edges. Just enough for a BFF to notice.”
Carly gave a strangled laugh.
“You slept with Luke, didn’t you?”
Her breath caught at Kim’s outright question. At her spot-on guess. But then, Kim was no dummy and never had been. And Lord only knew, she had probably picked up dozens of clues in that one short week to tell her something momentous had happened in her best friend’s life.
Momentous, all right.
Who knew so much could have come from her one and only time with Luke?
Who knew she could have been so naive? So stupid?
“Sorry, Kim. I... It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell you back then. I just needed some time.” Time to hold her secret excitement close to her heart, the way Luke had held her close to his. “I almost couldn’t believe it had happened.” She gave a derisive laugh worthy of Brock Baron. “I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the way I felt.”
Special. She’d felt special when she was with Luke. As if she finally stood out from the crowd. Finally meant something to someone who wasn’t connected to her by birth or a promise between best friends. “But before I could convince myself it was real...it was over.”
“You wouldn’t have slept with the guy if you didn’t care about him, Carly. And I know how much you did. When you broke up, I let you slide with the excuse you were going off to college and didn’t want to get tied down. But I didn’t fall for it, even then. What really happened?”
The door to the Longhorn opened. A lone customer turned to go to a motorcycle parked at the opposite end of the building.
Just like that, Luke had turned and walked away from her, too. And, like the customer who revved his engine and tore out of the parking lot, he never looked back.
She swallowed. “I slept with him,” she said evenly, flushing with embarrassment over her stupidity but determined to tell Kim the truth. This part of it. “I slept with him, and three days later he showed up on the ranch. My dad was looking for wranglers, and Luke planned to use me to try and get a job at the Roughneck.”
“He wouldn’t.” Kim sounded as stunned as she had felt at the time.
“He would. I confronted him, and he didn’t deny it.” Despite her struggle to keep her words even, she could hear the strain in her voice. “He didn’t even answer me. He just turned and left the ranch.”
The door to the Longhorn opened again. A small group of women spilled out of the bar and headed toward them, laughing and lurching and passing them by with farewell waves.
She and Kim waved back.
Another woman trailed behind them, walking steadily and flashing a key ring. “Don’t worry. I’m the designated driver.”
“Good deal,” Kim said.
They sat watching the women make their unsteady way down the length of the building, trailing bursts of screechy laughter behind them. Carly felt grateful for the din. She had more to share with Kim. But not here. Not now. “Time to get back inside.” She stood. “We wouldn’t want Luke thinking the sight of him scared me away.”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
Carly led the way back to the bar.
She hooked her thumbs into her belt loops. Her stomach felt calm, her nerves steady. She was a woman ready to take on the world—and Luke Nobel.
She wasn’t at all like the naive teenager of her early college days who had spent weeks in the bathroom of her dorm, dealing with morning sickness.
Well, dang. Where the heck had the man gone?
Carly clamped her jaw, taking out her frustration on another mint.
Earlier, she had managed to keep track of Luke in the long mirror across from her. Now a slim redhead had taken the stool he had occupied just a minute ago. She leaned back on her own stool and tilted her head, trying to see through the crowd standing three deep behind her.
For all she cared, Luke could be out on the dance floor with some wide-eyed city slicker or snuggled up in a booth with a wannabe buckle bunny. It didn’t matter to her what woman had caught his attention or even what the two of them had gotten up to. The important thing was to know exactly where to find him. She didn’t want him sneaking up on her. And with her luck, that’s just—
“Hey, Carly.” Luke’s voice rumbled over all the others around them.
She looked up. His reflection stared back at her from the mirror.
He stood directly behind her, the press of the crowd keeping him so close, she would need only to lean back the slightest bit to rest against his broad chest. He could wrap his arms around her and settle his chin on the top of her head, the way he had the night they had curled up on his truck’s tailgate to watch the stars come out.
Which had led to their making out.
Which had turned into making love and changed her life forever.
She swiveled on her stool to face him. “What are you doing here, cowboy? I didn’t think ranch managers got nights off.”
“And