Willow in Bloom

He had light-brown hair cut short on the sides and left sort of haphazardly spiky on top; a sharp chiseled jaw; a supple mouth Adonis would have envied; a thin, straight nose; deep-set eyes that were so vibrant a green they looked more like emeralds beneath slightly bushy brows and a full, square forehead.

And when he smiled—even just a little—he had one dimple, one deep crease in the middle of his left cheek, that made him look mischievous and dashing and deliciously dangerous all at once.

Oh no, she wasn’t mistaken. This was Tyler Chadwick. The one and only Tyler Chadwick. The unmistakable Tyler Chadwick.

He wasn’t someone she could forget.

Which, unfortunately, didn’t seem to be something he could say about her.

Unless maybe he thought she might be embarrassed if anyone found out she already knew him and how, and he was trying to spare her that by pretending they were just meeting for the first time…?

That must be it, she concluded.

“Why don’t you come into the office,” Willow suggested, thinking that once they were alone he would let her know he was merely being considerate of her feelings by making it seem as if he didn’t already have intimate knowledge of her.

Tyler shot a glance at Carl and said, “Thanks for your help.” Then he turned those oh-so-striking green eyes back on Willow.

She got lost in them for a moment before she realized he wasn’t looking meaningfully into her face, he was merely waiting for her to move out of the doorway so they could go into her office.

“This way,” she said unnecessarily, mentally yanking herself into line as she turned to go back the way she’d come.

She heard the click of his boot heels behind her, but he didn’t close the door to allow them privacy.

“Oh, we should have shut the door,” she said, as if it had just occurred to her.

“Okay.”

He backtracked to do that, then joined her at her desk.

Willow pointed to one of the visitors chairs and took her own seat on the opposite side of the gray metal desk before she said, “Okay, the coast is clear.”

Tyler smiled that dimpled smile, but his brows pulled together in a show of confusion. “The coast is clear for what? Talkin’ money?”

If he was playing dumb, this was taking it too far.

Or did he really not remember her?

She searched his glorious green eyes for any sign of recognition.

But it honestly wasn’t there. Not a hint of it. Not one iota. Not so much as an indication that he thought she looked vaguely familiar, and was trying to figure out where he’d seen her before.

How was that possible?

He hadn’t been drinking that night. Even though they’d met in a blues club where liquor was flowing like water, he’d been ordering ginger ale. So she knew alcohol wasn’t to blame.

But then it occurred to her that not only did Tyler know her as Wyla—the nickname her old friend Becky Lindstrom had called her all through college and used that night—but Willow had also looked considerably different.

Thanks to Becky’s makeover, her hair had been loose and her face had been made up—complete with lipstick. And she’d been wearing one of Becky’s dresses—a form-fitting little red number Willow would never have had the courage to buy, let alone wear at any other time.

She definitely hadn’t looked the way she did today. Or any other day or night before or after that fateful evening she’d met Tyler Chadwick.

So maybe that was the problem. Maybe without the face paint, with her hair tied back, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, introduced to him by another name, and in an entirely different setting, she looked so different that he just wasn’t putting two and two together.

And maybe if she helped with that two and two he might see past the surface and add it all up.

With that in mind, she said, “So are you on hiatus from rodeo riding?”

“That’s right, you said you know who I am, didn’t you? You follow the circuit?” he asked.

“No, but I saw you ride in Tulsa in June. Mid-June. On a Friday night…” Of course, when she and Becky had met him in that bar much later that evening they’d pretended they hadn’t seen the rodeo and didn’t know who he was. Just to give him a hard time.

So that wasn’t much of a hint.

“There was a packed crowd that night,” he was saying as Willow worked to pay attention. “Standing room only. You must have had your tickets a long while in advance. Was that your first time?”

“Yes.” For the rodeo. And only the second for what came later that night….

“It was my next-to-last,” he said quietly, soberly.

Willow sensed that she’d hit on a sore subject. “Did you retire?” she asked, using the term facetiously, since he was hardly retirement age.

But all he said in answer was, “Something like that.”

It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it, and because it wasn’t getting her any nearer her goal, anyway, she didn’t pursue it. Instead she decided to try a different tack.

“I suppose you must have met a lot of people along the way.”

“Probably more than my fair share.”

“A lot of women.”

He smiled wryly. “Probably more than my fair share.”

Willow acknowledged that with a raise of her chin, but began to give in to the inevitable thought she’d been trying to avoid—that she had been just one of many. That that night, so unlike anything she had ever done in her life, had been so commonplace to him that he didn’t even remember it.

“So you got around pretty good, did you?” she heard herself say before she even knew she was going to. In a very accusatory tone.

“I didn’t have a different woman every night of the week, if that’s what you’re asking, no. But what does that have to do with opening an account for feed?”

Good question.

Willow had to think fast to come up with an answer.

“I was just wondering if you’d settled down with a wife or a girlfriend who would also be on the account.”

Feeble. Oh, was that feeble.

But it was the best she could do on the spot.