A Texas-Sized Secret

“Who else?” He calmed himself by stroking his palm up and down the length of his horse’s neck. “The man’s a worthless user. He goes through women like we go through feed for the horses.”

She flushed, and he knew she didn’t like hearing it, but true was true.

His voice low and soft, Toby added, “He’s never going to stand with you, Naomi.”

She took a breath and huffed it out again. “I know that, too. And I don’t want him to, anyway.” Shaking her head, she started pacing again. “One night of bad judgment doesn’t make for a relationship. But I should tell him about the baby before this Maverick person sends that video out into the world and it goes viral.” She stopped opposite him again and laid one hand against her belly. “Viral. People everywhere will see that awful video. People will be laughing at me. Feeling sorry for me. Or, worse, cheering, because like you said, I haven’t always been the nicest human being on the planet. Oh, God, my stomach’s churning and it has nothing to do with the baby.”

“You’ll survive this,” he said.

“Why should I have to survive? Who is this Maverick? Why has nobody found him yet?”

“I don’t know—to all those questions.”

Shooting another speculative look at his friend, Toby wondered exactly what she was thinking. With Naomi it was never easy to guess. She’d long since learned to school her features into a blank mask that could convince her disinterested parents that all was well. But usually with him, she was more forthcoming. Still, things were different now. She was more shaken than he’d ever seen her. It wasn’t just the pregnancy—it was how her life seemed to be spinning out of her control.

And Naomi liked control.

“The video he sent me was just...” Her sentence trailed off as she shook her head. “If he puts that out on the internet like he threatened, everyone in town’s going to know my secret in a few hours.”

Toby sighed, braced both forearms on the top rung of the corral fence and waited until her gaze met his to say, “Honey, they were all going to know within another month or two anyway. It’s not like you could hide it much longer.”

He was repeating himself and he knew it, but sometimes it took a hammer to pound the truth into Naomi’s mind when she didn’t want to admit to something. That hard head of hers was one of the things he liked most about her. Which made him a damn fool, probably. But there was something about the look she got in her eye when she was set on something that twisted his guts into knots. Knots he couldn’t do a damn thing about, since she was his best friend. But he did wonder from time to time if Naomi’s insides ever twisted over him.

Naomi stopped pacing, spun around to look at him and blurted, “You’re right.”

That surprised Toby enough that his eyebrows lifted high on his forehead. She saw it and laughed, and blast if the sound didn’t light fires inside him. Fires he deliberately ignored. Hell, of course his body responded as it did. She was a beautiful woman with a laugh that sounded like warm nights and silk sheets. A man would have to be dead six months to not be affected by Naomi.

“I’m not so stubborn—or delusional—I can’t see the truth when it takes a bite out of me,” she said. Leaning her arms on the fence rail alongside his, she said, “That’s really why I came out to see you this morning. I know what I have to do, and I wanted to ask you to come with me to tell my parents.”

He frowned a little, because he didn’t much care for Naomi’s folks. They were always so prissy, so sure of their own righteousness they put him off. Their house was like a damn museum, quiet, still, where a dust speck wouldn’t have the nerve to show up. Always made him feel like a clumsy cowboy.

But he knew how they made Naomi feel, too. She’d never quite measured up to parents who probably shouldn’t have had a child to begin with. From everything Naomi had told him and from what he’d seen firsthand, they’d been showing her for years in word and deed just how disappointing she was to them. The announcement she had to make today wasn’t going to help the situation any.

She was watching him, waiting for an answer, and Toby saw a flicker of unease in her eyes. He didn’t like it. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll come along.”

“Thanks, Toby,” she said, reaching over to lay one hand on his forearm. “I knew you’d do this for me. You really are my best friend.”

A best friend probably shouldn’t experience a jolt of lust with just a touch of her hand on his arm. So he’d just keep that to himself.

* * *

Naomi was nervous. But then, she’d been nervous since opening the email with the subject line Your Secret Is Out. She’d known the moment she saw the blasted thing in her inbox that Maverick had finally turned his talons toward her. For the last few months, she’d watched as people she knew and cared about had had their lives turned upside down by this malicious phantom. And somehow she’d managed to keep hoping he wouldn’t turn on her. Now that he had, though, she was forced to tell her parents the truth and live through what she always thought of as the “disappointment stare.” Again.

Her entire life, Naomi had known that she was continually letting her parents down. Oh, no one had actually said anything—that would have been distasteful. But parents had other ways of letting their children know they didn’t measure up, and the Prices were masters at silent disapproval.

No matter what Naomi had done in her life, her mother and father stood back and looked at her as if they didn’t have a clue where she’d come from. Today was going to be no different.

Thank God Toby was coming with her to face them. She glanced at his stoic profile as he drove his Ford 150 down the road toward her family’s mini mansion. He was the only one who knew her secret. The only one she’d trusted enough to go to when she realized two months ago that she was pregnant. And didn’t that say something? She hadn’t even told Cecelia Morgan and Simone Parker, and the three of them had been close for years.

But when she was in trouble, she always had turned to Toby. Even though telling him she was pregnant because of her own stupid decision to spend one night with the fast-talking, too-handsome-for-his-own-good Gio made her feel like an even bigger idiot.

Naomi still couldn’t believe that one night of bad judgment and too much champagne had brought her to this. Toby was right, though. Even without Maverick shoving his nose into her business, she wouldn’t have been able to hide her pregnancy for much longer. Loose tops and a strategically held handbag weren’t going to disguise reality forever.

She shuddered a little in her seat. Naomi hated being pushed around by some nameless bully.

“You okay?” Toby asked, shooting her a quick look before turning his gaze back on the road in front of him.

“Not really,” she admitted. “What the hell am I going to say to them?”

“The truth, Naomi,” he said, reaching out to cover her hand with his. “Just tell them you’re pregnant.”

She held on to his hand and felt the warm, solid strength of him. “And when they ask who the father is?”

His mouth worked as if he wanted to say plenty but wasn’t letting the words out. She appreciated the effort. He couldn’t say anything about Gio that she hadn’t been feeling anyway.

When she told Toby about the baby, he’d instantly proven to be a much better man than the one she’d slept with. Toby offered to help any way he could, which was just one of the things she loved most about him. He didn’t judge. He was just there. Like the mountains. Or the ancient oaks surrounding his ranch house. He was sturdy. And dependable. And everything she’d never known in her life until him. Now she needed him more than ever.

The Prices lived in Pine Valley, an exclusive, gated golf course community where the mansions sat on huge lots behind tidy lawns where weeds didn’t dare appear and “doing lunch” was considered a career. At least, that was how Naomi had always seen it. Growing up there hadn’t been easy, again because her parents never seemed to know what to do with her. Maybe if she’d had a sibling to help her through, it might have been different. But alone, Naomi had always felt...unworthy, somehow.

Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt when Toby stopped at the gate. When he lowered the window to speak to the guard, a wave of early-summer heat invaded the truck cab.

“Who’re you here to see?” the older man holding a clipboard asked.

Naomi knew that voice, so she leaned forward and smiled. “Hello, Stan. We’re just coming in to see my parents.”

“Naomi, it’s good to see you.” The man smiled, hit a button on the inside of his guard hut, and the high, wide gate instantly began to roll clear. “Your folks are at home. Bet they’ll be happy to see you.”

He waved them through, and she sat back. “Happy to see me? I don’t think so.”

Toby, still holding her hand, gave it a hard squeeze. She held on tightly, even when he would have released her. Because right now she needed his support—his friendship—more than ever.

The streets were beautiful, with big homes, most of them tucked behind shrubbery-lined fences. Even in a gated community, some of the very wealthy seemed to want their own personal security as well. Of course, not everyone’s home was hidden away behind a wall of trees, hedges or stone. The palatial homes were all different, all custom designed and built. And the closer Toby’s truck drew to the Price mansion, the more Naomi felt the swarms of butterflies soaring and diving in the pit of her stomach.

God, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt at ease with her parents. It had always seemed as though she was putting on a production, playing the part of the perfect daughter. Only she never quite measured up. She wished things were different, but if wishes came true, she wouldn’t be here in the first place, would she?

The driveway to her parents’ house was long and curved, the better to display the banks of flowers tended with loving care by a squad of gardeners. The sweep of lawn was green and neatly trimmed, and trees were kept trained into balls on branches that looked as though they were trying to remember how to be real trees. The house itself was showy but tasteful, as her parents would accept nothing less—it was a blend of Cape Cod and Victorian. Pale gray with white trim and black shutters, it stood as graceful as a dancer in the center of the massive lot. The front door was white without a speck of dust to mar its surface. The windows gleamed in the sunlight and displayed curtains within, all drawn to exactly the same point.

It was like looking at a picture in an architectural magazine. Something staged, where no one really lived. And of course, she told herself silently, no one did. Instead of living, her parents existed on a stage where everyone knew their lines and no one ever strayed from the script. Well, except for Naomi.

Naomi herself had been the one time anything unexpected had happened in her parents’ lives. She was, she knew, an “accident.” A late-in-life baby who had caused them nothing but embarrassment at first, followed by years of disappointment. Her mother had been horrified to find herself pregnant at the age of forty-five and had endured the unwelcome pregnancy because to do otherwise would have been unthinkable for her. They raised her with care if not actual love and expected her not to make any further ripples in their life.

But Naomi had always caused ripples. Sometimes waves.

And today was going to be a tsunami.

“You’re getting quiet,” Toby said with a flicker of a smile. “Never a good sign.”

She had to smile back. “Too much to think about.”