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  “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 b
utt 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.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He hadn’t been in town since he and Julia had gone their separate ways and he had discovered what it felt like to have his heart burned out of his chest while he was still breathing.

  Because he’d been holed up on his ranch, Liam hadn’t seen the sign he was standing in front of. The sign proclaiming this piece of land to be the “Future Home of The Hollows Cantina.”

  Liam assumed that the word Cantina had to have been an afterthought since it was written just above the now crossed-out Brasserie. Apparently either Julia or the Mendozas had decided a more down-to-earth name for the restaurant was needed.

  He supposed that was progress of a sort.

  There were other things written in on the sign, things that had been inserted after the sign had been completed because they were written in rather than painted on. Like the words Grand Opening.

  From what he could see, it was scheduled for a date two months in the future. On the left side of the sign were the words Now Hiring, which had to be a welcome sight for a number of people. Those were the ones who knew that ranching was not their true calling, but they still wanted to live in Horseback Hollow and earn a living. Jobs that didn’t involve ranching were scarce around here.

  This new cantina would make them less so.

  “Congratulations, Julia,” Liam murmured under his breath to the sign. “You did it. You got your restaurant.”

  “You know, talking to yourself out in public might be viewed by some folks as a person losing his grip on reality.”

  Liam didn’t have to turn around to know that his brother Jude was standing behind him. Seemed as if he couldn’t make a move without tripping over a relative, he thought in resignation.

  “And sneaking up behind people is one surefire way to get the living daylights beaten out of them,” Liam commented as he slowly turned around to face Jude.

  “Guess it’s lucky for me that you’re so even-tempered,” Jude joked.

  “Yeah, lucky,” Liam repeated in a less than cheerful tone.

  The next minute Jude was asking him eagerly, “Did you hear the news?”

  He’d obviously heard it as well as seen it, given that he was standing in front of the sign boasting of it. “Yeah, the restaurant’s going up,” he answered Jude dourly.

  For a second Jude stared at him, confused. The restaurant was not what he was referring to. “Well, yeah, that’s news, too,” Jude agreed even as he shrugged it off, “but it’s old news.”

  “And you have ‘new’ news?” Liam asked with a touch of sarcasm.

  In all honesty, Liam really wasn’t sure what he was doing here in town, or what he had hoped to accomplish by coming.

  He supposed that, deep down, he was hoping to run into Julia and get a dialogue going between them. He missed her, damn it, missed the sound of her laughter, the way her eyes sparkled. The way her hair smelled.

  It almost seemed impossible, given that they had only been anything remotely resembling “a couple” for little more than two weeks. And yet, when he was with her, he felt as if he had come home, that he was finally whole.

  And without her, he wasn’t.

  It was as simple as that and he could either make his peace with being without her—or do something about getting her back.

  The latter wasn’t going to be easy and he knew it. For that reason, he secretly welcomed this unexpected distraction that Jude offered.

  “Yeah, I do have ‘new’ news,” Jude told him, pleased that he knew something that Liam didn’t. “And it invol
ves Toby.”

  “What about him?” Liam was curious. And if it involved his other brother, why hadn’t Toby come over or called and told him about whatever it was himself? Liam could only think of one reason he hadn’t seen Toby. “Is he okay?”

  Jude grinned and succeeded in annoying him even more than he already had. “Oh, he’s more than okay. He’s pretty damn happy and more than a damn sight relieved.”

  Liam struggled to hold on to his patience. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on in bits and pieces or are you going to just come out and say it like any normal adult?”

  Jude looked just a little put off by his attitude. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re no fun?”

  “Yeah, lots of people,” Liam assured him. “Now talk,” he ordered, trying not to allow his concern to show through. “What’s going on with Toby?”

  Jude did what he could to maintain an air of mystery about what he was revealing, doing so a layer at a time. “Well, somebody slipped an envelope under his door yesterday. It was full of money. A whole bunch of money.”

  Liam stared at his brother, his expression becoming a deep frown. “From who?”

  “That’s just the thing,” Jude told him, the excitement in his voice growing again. “There was a note but it wasn’t signed. It just said the cash was to help take care of the Hemings kids.”

  “Had to be someone in town,” Liam assumed.

  But Jude shook his head. “Toby really doesn’t think so.”

  “Why?” There was only one reason for that, he realized. “Just how much money are we talking about?” When Jude told him, it was all Liam could do to keep his jaw from dropping. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Nobody around here has that kind of money to give away, no matter how good their intentions.”

  “Nobody but the Fortunes,” Jude reminded him.

  Liam banked down his automatic desire to dismiss the family because he didn’t think of them as altruistic. But of late he’d been learning more and more about the Fortunes and realizing that his preconceived notions regarding them were not just unfair, they were downright wrong.

  “How does Toby feel about being on the receiving end of charity?” Liam asked. Toby had every bit as much pride as he did. He’d always liked earning his own way. “Is he resentful?”