Marriage, Maverick Style!

That gave him two and a half weeks to get through to Tessa. Ordinarily he had limitless confidence in his powers of persuasion. Not so much in this case.

“Carson? You still with me?”

“Right here. And of course I’ll be there on the twentieth.”

Once he hung up with Jason, Carson called Strickland’s Boarding House. Tessa’s sister Claire answered, politely identifying herself. He almost told her who he was. But then he remembered the look on Tessa’s face when she’d left him the morning before. If Tessa knew he was calling, would she even come to the phone?

He decided to take no chances. “I’d like to speak with Tessa Strickland.”

“Hold on.”

A moment later, she came on the line. “This is Tessa.”

Just the sound of her voice made his chest feel tight. He wanted to see her, wanted it a lot. “You probably won’t believe this, but I can’t stop thinking about you.”

A silence. Not a welcoming one. “Hello, Carson.”

“I was thinking maybe lunch. We could drive over to—”

“Carson, I don’t think so.”

He lowered his head and stared at his boots. “It’s just lunch.”

She spoke again, her voice almost a whisper. “Please don’t worry. I went to Kalispell yesterday and took care of it.”

“It?” And then he caught on. He swore low. “Come on, Tessa. Don’t. I’m not calling about the damn morning-after pill.”

A silence on her end. A long, gruesome one. Then finally, “It’s just...not a good time for me to get anything started, you know?”

“Fine.” Though it wasn’t. Not fine in the least. “This isn’t a personal call, anyway.” That was only half a lie. He wanted to get close to her, absolutely. But he also wanted to help her have the career she deserved. “Did you know you left sketches in my suite?”

“Yeah. I saw the sketch pad on the coffee table and looked through it. I don’t remember how or when it happened, but apparently we plotted out a moonshine campaign.” She paused, then, “Wait a minute. You’re going ahead with the moonshine thing after all?” Now she sounded surprised—and not in a good away.

“No.”

She sighed. “Glad to hear it. You had me worried there for a minute.”

“This isn’t about the moonshine. It’s about you, about your future. Those sketches are amazing. I want you to think about—”

“Carson.”

He stared at his boots some more and knew he was getting nowhere. Feeling desperate and pitiful—emotions with which he’d never been the least familiar—he took one more stab at getting through to her. “You have so much talent. I only want to—”

“No, thank you,” she said softly, with utter finality. “I have to go now. Goodbye.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_9694338f-e8cd-5868-aca6-a089eebacc47)

Tessa hung up the phone and hated herself.

She wanted to see Carson so much she could taste it, like a burning sensation on her tongue. She’d hurt him, blowing him off like that. She didn’t want to hurt him.

She just...

She needed to keep her head about her, needed to remember that getting swept off her feet by a killer-handsome, charismatic rich guy didn’t work for her.

Been there, done that. Not going there again.

She wanted real now—a down-to-earth life in this beautiful little town full of people she cared about. And if she couldn’t make that happen here, she would come up with a workable compromise, one wherein she could build a satisfying career and still visit Rust Creek Falls at least a few times a year. Eventually, once she figured out how to make the life she wanted for herself, she might even start looking for a guy who wanted the same things she did.

Carson Drake was not that guy. And it really was for the best that she’d told him goodbye.

* * *

At first, after Tessa hung up on him, Carson was seriously pissed off. He spent half the day on the phone, keeping up with things in LA, asking himself constantly why he hadn’t packed his bags and called his pilot.

That evening, he went downstairs to the hotel bar for a drink and ran into Nate Crawford, the owner of Maverick Manor. Nate said his wife, Callie, was working late at the medical clinic. “And I’ve been here at the hotel all day. How about a change of scenery? Follow me into town. We’ll grab a beer at the Ace in the Hole.” The no-frills saloon was the only bar inside the town limits.

At the Ace in the Hole, Carson had a longneck, played a little pool and talked business with Nate, who was always promoting investment opportunities in Rust Creek Falls. Nate wanted him to meet with some guy named Walker Jones who owned a number of day care centers all over the western states and was apparently on track to open a new day care in town—to cope with the recent baby boom, Carson assumed. Nate said Walker Jones might be willing to take on a silent partner or two.

“I’m in liquor and hospitality,” Carson reminded the other man. “I know nothing about child care centers.”

Nate shrugged. “Why not just meet with the guy? He’ll be in town in a couple of weeks.”

Carson should have said that he would be long gone by then. But he didn’t.

Because he was going nowhere—not until he absolutely had to. Not until he’d found a way to get Tessa to spend a little more time with him, not until he’d gotten his chance to make her see that LA was the right move for her. He really had a thing for her. And he just couldn’t walk away from that. Not until he was certain that it was never going anywhere.

Yeah, it didn’t make a lot of sense. He’d spent the last decade carefully avoiding anything remotely resembling an actual relationship with a woman and he’d planned on keeping it that way.

But then there was Tessa. Just the sight of her in her silly stork costume, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else than on that float holding Kayla’s baby...

One look at her and he’d known his plans were about to change.

He said, “I have meetings I can’t miss in LA the week of the twentieth. But if your guy is here before then, sure. Let’s have a drink at the Manor Bar, the three of us.”

Nate set down his beer. “I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to ask...”

“Yeah?”

“Whatever happened with Homer Gilmore and that moonshine project of yours? You ever get him to meet with you?”

“I spoke with him briefly Monday night at the picnic.”

Nate chuckled. “That Homer. One of a kind. And judging by the look on your face, the moonshine project is on hold?”

“You could say that.”

“Don’t want to talk about it, huh?”