Real Men Don't Quit(12)

Still, he was a fine-looking specimen, and the sensuous curl to his mouth brought the memories thundering back. Just a few nights ago, those gorgeous lips had wandered all over her neck, and that black stubble had rasped against her skin. The memory sent a shiver through her. She hadn’t seen Luke since that night, but he stubbornly occupied her thoughts, day and night.

“Hi, Tyler,” a man spoke from behind her. “Hi, Chloe.” She turned to see Nate, Ally’s fiancé, in his pickup truck idling at the curb. “Ally mentioned your car problems. Can I give you a ride home? We were minding Ally’s nephews the other day, so I still have a booster seat for Chloe here.”

“That would be great,” Tyler responded, glad for an interruption from her thoughts. She strapped Chloe into the booster seat before climbing in the passenger side. “Thanks, Nate.”

Nate cleared his throat as he pulled off. “Actually, I wanted to have a word with you in private. It’s about Ally and the wedding.”

Tyler shot him a sharp glance and caught his furtive air. What was going on here? All the evidence suggested Nate was fully committed to Ally, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was thinking of bailing on her?

“I don’t want Ally to know I’m talking to you.” Changing gears, he steered the vehicle around a corner. “You know how she’s getting nervy about the wedding?”

“I do, and who can blame her? She doesn’t want a repeat of the last debacle.”

“I keep telling her I love her and I’m busting to marry her. For Pete’s sake, the whole wedding was my idea in the first place!” Nate blew out a sigh of frustration. “But nothing I say is enough to reassure her, and it’s gotten to the point where she’s dreading the whole lead up. So I’ve decided to short-circuit the ordeal. I’m going to throw her a surprise wedding.”

“What’s a surprise wedding?”

“It’s a surprise party with the addition of a minister. Ally won’t know it’s coming. That way she won’t have time to worry if I’ll turn up. It’ll just happen, and she can enjoy herself. So what do you think?”

Tyler thought for a few moments before replying, “I think it’s a bloody brilliant idea.”

Nate flashed her a relieved grin. “It’ll still be at Clifton Gardens, but on Sunday, three weeks from now. I’ve already taken over all the wedding arrangements because Ally’s been dragging her feet, so it’s no hassle for me to change the dates and tell all the guests. But there’s one thing I need your help with. You have to get Ally to choose her wedding gown. I can’t do that for her.”

“I don’t know how I’ll get her into a bridal shop. She refuses even to look at any wedding magazines.”

“Tell me about it.” Nate rolled his eyes. “But if anyone can convince her, it’s you. Can I count on you?”

The anxiety in his expression caught her attention. She knew Nate was in love with Ally, but she hadn’t realized how much agony he was going through until now. And the same torture was tying Ally in knots as she fretted irrationally about being jilted once more. If this was what love did to happy, committed couples, then Tyler was glad she’d escaped its jaws. She didn’t need this kind of torment in her life. Not that she’d sworn off men. She was no nun, and she had all the usual urges of a sexually active woman, but she could satisfy those urges without putting her heart—and her life—on the line. Once you succumb to love, your life is no longer your own, she thought. She’d been burned once with Chloe’s dad; she wasn’t dumb enough to repeat the experience.

She reached over to pat Nate’s hand. “Sure. You can count on me. I’ll get Ally to a bridal shop if I have to drag her in kicking and screaming.”

“Thanks.” Relief spread across Nate’s face. “It’s good to know Ally has a friend with lady balls.”



Nate tooted his horn and drove off, leaving Tyler and Chloe outside their house. “Come on, chickadee,” Tyler said to Chloe as they walked toward the cottage. “I’ll make you a peanut-butter sandwich for lunch.”

After a boring day at the store, Chloe was in a crotchety mood. “Don’t want peanut butter.”

“Cheese, then?”

“No.” Chloe stuck out her lower lip.

“Baked beans? You love baked beans.”

“No.”

Tyler’s steps faltered as she saw Luke walking up her driveway. He was carrying a football, and trailing behind him were several children, all of them older than Chloe.

“Hi.” Luke’s eyes seemed to light up as he neared them. He tossed the ball between his hands. “We had to come over to retrieve a lost ball. These are my nieces and nephew.” He nodded at the kids surrounding him. The oldest was a pretty teenage girl, the youngest maybe eight or nine. “Guys, say hello to Tyler and her daughter, Chloe.”

Chloe clung shyly to Tyler’s hand as the kids mumbled greetings. The only boy among them resumed munching a grilled corn on the cob.

“I’m surprised you could find anything in my jungle of a backyard,” Tyler said. In a way she was glad she and Luke were meeting like this. Surrounded by so many youngsters, she was forced to act naturally, as if nothing had happened between them, as if they hadn’t shared the most explosive near kiss of her life.

“That’s why I brought my helpers,” Luke said.

“I love the wind chimes on your veranda,” the pretty teenager said. “Luke says you made them.”

“Yes, I did, and, uh, thanks.” She glanced at Luke, who gave her a lazy grin. He seemed very at ease, she thought. Probably he’d dismissed what happened the other night as soon as he’d gotten back home. She pursed her lips at the idea and glanced down at Chloe’s curls.

“Mumma.” Chloe tugged at her hand, her gaze pinned on the boy with the corn on the cob. “Can I have corn, too?” she stage-whispered.

“Sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t have any at the moment.”

“We’ve got heaps next door,” the boy said to Chloe. “Why don’t you come over?”

Chloe flushed and pressed her face into Tyler’s skirt. Before Tyler could respond, Luke hunkered down in front of her daughter. “We’ve got watermelon too, Little Miss Moppet. Do you like watermelon?” He waited until she nodded. “Well, then, looks like you’ll have to come next door with me.” He offered his hand to her.

So Tyler found herself going next door, with Chloe clutching Luke’s hand instead of hers. She’d never seen her daughter take to a relative stranger so quickly, and she was part-glad, part-miffed. On the one hand it was reassuring to see her daughter relating positively with a newcomer, but on the other hand, why did it have to be Luke? Tyler had enough trouble guarding her responses to the man without her daughter developing an attachment to him as well.

En masse, Luke’s four older sisters were a tad formidable. When Luke introduced her, one of them gave him a broad wink, while another, a slim, fierce-looking woman, gave her a hard stare.

“Sit down, sit down,” one of the other, friendlier sisters insisted, waving at the laden table on the deck. “We’re just having a casual lunch, picking at whatever we like.”

Luke helped Chloe to corn on the cob and sat her down next to him. Tyler, realizing her stomach was rumbling, piled her plate with salad and cold roast beef. His sisters might be intimidating, but they sure could cook.

The teenager who’d complimented her on her wind chimes drew up a seat next to her. “Is that necklace one of your designs, too?” she asked admiringly, pointing to the silver-and-moonstone chain dangling from Tyler’s neck.

“Yes. I sell them at Java & Joolz if you’re interested,” Tyler replied.

“Oh, Java & Joolz!” One of the sisters—Rosie, perhaps—sat up. “A friend was telling me about it. That’s the new gallery and coffee shop, isn’t it?”

Tyler nodded. “I’m the part owner.”

Rosie tapped the sister next to her. “We must visit there sometime, maybe next week.”

For a while they all chatted about the store, and Tyler found herself enjoying their company. As an only child, she envied Luke his four sisters. They were bossy, no doubt about it, but Luke had a way of defusing them, of making them laugh. Only Helen, the fierce-looking one, seemed to hold back, her expression frequently clouded while everyone else relaxed.

The children began to pester Luke to play with them. Eventually he coaxed Chloe to join him and the younger ones in a game of tetherball.

“Luke’s great with kids,” Karly said to Tyler. “He had no choice. He started babysitting for me and Helen when he was about twelve.”

Mags nodded. “By the time my Hannah was born he was sick of it, but he helped with her too, where he could.”

Tyler watched her daughter giggling as she clumsily swatted the ball to Luke. “Well, he’s certainly a hit with Chloe. It usually takes her a while to warm up to new people.” Her gaze shifted to Luke. The exercise had made his hair flop in his eyes, his skin gleamed with perspiration, and his T-shirt clung to his broad back. As he leaped back and forth over the grass, she couldn’t look away from him. It took quite an effort to wrench her gaze away, and as she did so, she caught Helen studying her.