His Small-Town Girl

“Interesting I can handle,” Tyler muttered, sitting up straight. “The real problem is that ours is a family business, and everyone has seats on the board, along with some longtime employees and investors. My brother and sister and I received shares throughout the years, always on an equal basis, mind you. Mom got hers in the divorce, and Shasta inherited hers when Dad died. Throw in the fact that Dad named me CEO a month before he passed, and it makes for some, shall we say, volatile board meetings.” He lifted a hand to the back of his neck, adding, “To tell you the truth, I walked out of one of those meetings yesterday. That’s how I wound up here.”

“Wow.” Charlotte shook her head, half-relieved because Tyler hadn’t come to Eden with a mind to put in an Aldrich store, half-sympathetic because his family obviously plagued rather than blessed him. “And everyone thinks that a family with all the advantages of the Aldrich grocery store chain has it made.”

Tyler stiffened, a look of such affront and disappointment on his face that Charlotte caught her breath, realizing abruptly how judgmental she must have sounded. Before she could even begin to apologize, he lurched to his feet and stalked away.

For a moment, she could do nothing more than gape at his retreating back. He’d covered about half the distance to his room before she hastily ditched the coffee and leaped up to follow, without even a clue as to what she would say when she caught up to him. If she caught up to him.

He couldn’t believe it. There he’d sat thinking that Charlotte Jefford had to be the most refreshing, unassuming, genuine human being he’d ever met, and all along she’d known exactly who he was. She’d probably known from the moment he’d signed the guest registration card.

He had to hand it to her, though. She hadn’t let on in any fashion. Not one simpering smile had slipped out, not one admiring titter, not one desperately suggestive whisper. Until the end. Until after he’d spilled his guts like some needy guest on one of those tawdry psycho-babble talk shows.

What on earth had gotten into him? He’d never said those things to anyone. Any complaints he made about his personal life had always come back to haunt him. Generally his family would hear of them before the words were out of his mouth, not to mention his rivals.

His circles of acquaintance nurtured some notorious gossips, so he’d learned early on to keep his personal thoughts and feelings to himself. Every word out of his mouth could be, and often was, used against him in some fashion or another. He hadn’t realized until just that very moment how confining and…lonely that had become. To his perplexed shame, he’d wanted her to know him, really know him, because somehow Charlotte Jefford had felt safe.

Let this be a lesson to him. Not even a quiet, seemingly serene stranger stuck out here in this small town in the middle of nowhere and nothing made a safe confidant, not for him, not when she had known who he was all along.

The bitter depth of his disappointment shocked him. She was nothing to him, nothing at all. Yet, he could not deny what he felt. Swamped with angry misery, he did not even hear her run after him, did not hear her calling his name, until she touched him, her hand slipping around to fall on his forearm.

“Tyler!”

He turned back before he could think better of it, and found himself looking down into her troubled hazel eyes. Something wrenched inside him, something frightfully needy. Making a belated attempt to extricate himself, he stepped away. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually that blunt or insensitive.”

His defenses firmly in place now, a ready, hard-won insouciance surged forward, burying his disillusionment. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

She looked crestfallen, ashamed. “I shouldn’t have implied that money made you different or could solve all your problems.”

“Problems?” he echoed lightly. “What would you know about my problems, anyway?”

He winced inwardly at that last, surprised by the inexplicable need to hurt her. As she, he realized with a jolt, had hurt him.

The wideness of her mottled eyes proclaimed that his jab had hit its mark; the frank, troubled depths of them told him that she would not retaliate in kind, increasing his guilt tenfold in an instant. Like intricate quilts of soft golds, greens and blues those eyes offered comfort and warmth, as well as surprising beauty.

“I’m sorry, Tyler. I—I don’t know what else to say.”

Anger leaked out of him like air from a balloon.

“No, I’m sorry. I overreacted.”

Unable to maintain contact with those eyes, he looked away. The unwelcome feeling that he owed her some explanation pushed words from him.

“How long have you known exactly who I am?”

When she didn’t answer immediately, he speared her with an incisive glance. She looked confused.

“You mean when did I put you together with the Aldrich grocery stores?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

She shrugged. “As soon as I learned your name. Why wouldn’t I put it together? It’s perfectly natural to associate one thing with another. I didn’t know for sure, of course, until I saw your reaction to the bread.”

“So that was deliberate,” he accused, more wounded than indignant.

“Serving the only loaf of bread I had in the house?” she asked plaintively, but then she bit her lip. “No, that’s not fair. It was the only loaf, but I did want to see how you’d react.”

Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Could he be a bigger fool? With Aldrich stores blanketing the seven states nearest to Texas, did he really think she wouldn’t put it together?