The First Love Cookie Club (24 page)

“You’re crying.”

“No I’m not.” She sniffled. “Allergies. Probably that cedar tree.”

They stood there for a moment, neither speaking nor looking at each other, and then finally Travis said, “I had no idea Crystal was going to show up.”

She believed him. The look of shock on his face had been real when he’d glanced out the window of Rinky-Tink’s and seen her with Jazzy. But that wasn’t the issue.

“Talk to me,” he pleaded.

She shrugged, held
A Wrinkle in Time
up to her chest. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to thank him for the gift. Now didn’t seem the time. “What is there to say? Your ex-wife is back.”

“So? What does that have to do with you and me?”

Quickly, she peeked at him. He looked as miserable as she felt. “Travis, there is no you and me. Yes, maybe we were working on getting something started, but it never got off the ground. Better to let it go now—“

“Bullshit!”

She blinked, stepped back, stuck her hand in her pocket.

“You’re using Crystal as an excuse because you’re afraid of what you’re feeling.”

“That’s not it.” She fisted her hand around Jazzy’s angel ornament. A girl needed her mother. Even if she was a lousy one. Sarah thought of her own mother, how she would have done anything for just a little more attention from Helen. If Crystal was back to make amends with her daughter, she should be allowed to do so without Sarah getting in the way. “You have to give Crystal a chance.”

“I do not.”

“What if she’s really changed? People do change.”

“I don’t care, I don’t love her.”

“Maybe not, but Jazzy does.”

“What are you saying? That I should take my ex-wife back even though I don’t love her and she sure as hell doesn’t love me, just for Jazzy’s sake?” He looked baffled.

“I’m saying you owe it to Jazzy to let her mother spend time with her. It’s the adult thing to do.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re quitting without even giving us a fighting chance. We’re good together, Sarah, and you know it. Both of us are better people when we’re around each other.”

“How’s that?”

“When I’m around you, you show me how to be independent, objective, and detached when I need to be. And when you’re around me, you’re more outgoing. You get out of your head into your body.”

“Oh, don’t even bring up sex.”

“Why not?” He stepped closer, desire flickingin his eyes. “I’ve never experienced anything like it with anyone else and I have a feeling it’s the same for you.”

Sarah feared terribly that he would try to kiss her. “There’s more to life than just sex.”

“That’s true, but great sex is what puts the shine on life.”

“You could try Turtle Wax,” she quipped inanely.

Travis threw back his head and laughed. “See there, that’s what I love about you, your wry sense of humor.”

Love? He’d said the word “love.”

Don’t read anything into it.

Normally, she could have been cool about this, detached and observant without getting involved. But he’d ruined all that. He’d pulled her back to her fifteen-year-old self where she felt everything so intensely and didn’t yet possess the skills to bury her feelings deep. Damn him for that.

She squeezed the angel ornament inside her pocket and drew in a constricted breath. “It’s for the best. We might have temporarily brought out the best in each other, but in the long haul we were sure to get on each other’s nerves.”

“That’s it? You’re waving the white flag before we’ve even begun?”

“I’m saying let’s take a big step back. You have Jazzy and now Crystal to think about.”

“Baggage,” he said. “That’s what this is about. I’ve got too much baggage for you.”

“You can’t deny that your life is complicated.”

“And you live for simplicity.”

“My needs are very basic,” she said, not only because it was true, but to get him to back off. He didowe it to his daughter to give her mother a second chance, and he couldn’t really do that if Sarah was standing in the way.

“If she stays here, Crystal’s going to try to win me back,” he said. “You have no idea how seductive she can be.”

“I can guess,” Sarah said dryly.

“So are you really saying what I think you’re saying? It’s over?” He looked so hurt, but he couldn’t be feeling one-tenth of the pain she tamped down inside her.

“I’m saying we need to put this in the deep freeze.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.” Why wouldn’t he just go?

He stepped back as if she’d slapped him. “I see. I guess I was feeling something more than you were.”

No, no you weren’t. If you only knew how badly I wanted to fling myself into your arms and beg you to love me forever, how hard this is for me, you’d cut me some slack.

“I guess this means you won’t be keeping your promise to make kismet cookies with Jazzy on Christmas Eve,” he said.

Her gut torqued. When it came to that little girl, she couldn’t say no. “Of course I’ll still make cookies with Jazzy, but let’s do it here at the Merry Cherub instead of at your house. It’ll give you and Crystal some time alone to talk things out.”

“I don’t want time alone with Crystal. I want time with you.”

“Well you know what the Rolling Stones say about that.”

“Huh?”

“You can’t always get what you want.”

He ran a hand through his hair, looked utterly lost. “Sarah…

“Thank you by the way.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “For what?”

She held up the book.
“A Wrinkle in Time.”

“The book was to thank you for helping my daughter. Books are powerful things.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Nothing else you want to say?”

“I’m not your ex-wife. I’m not looking for an excuse to run out on you. I’m thinking what would be best for Jazzy.”

“What about you and me? What would be the best thing for us?”

“You told me yourself that you and Jazzy are a package deal. There can’t be just you and me. Jazzy is always going to factor into the equation and you know it.”

“Are you sure that’s it?” His gray eyes darkened to charcoal.

“What are you accusing me of?”

He raised his palms. “Hey, if it’s too hot in the kitchen, I get it, but at least have the decency to tell me that and stop pretending you’re backing off for Jazzy’s best interest.”

He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d hauled off and slapped her across the face. This had been an agonizing decision for her and here he was suggesting she was simply running away because the pressure was too much for her to handle.

Could he be right?
whispered a dark voice inside her.

She shook her head.

“It’s been great reconnecting with you, Sarah. Have a wonderful life,” he said, sarcasm tingeing his voice, and then he stepped off the porch and turned away.

Her instinct was to call to him, to ask him to stay, but she squelched it. Squelched it hard. She’d become so adept at squelching her feelings, she didn’t know how to take her jackboot off the lifeline and allow herself to just breathe.

As she watched him walk away in the darkness, she knew she’d never love another the way she loved this man, but right now, nothing on earth could make her tell him that.

A tornado couldn’t have as effectively laid waste to Travis’s heart as Sarah’s coolly spoken words. Stupidly, he’d thought their lovemaking had meant something to her. Apparently, he’d been dead wrong.

Blindly, he walked back to the square, his pulse thudding erratically. Okay, so Sarah wanted him to give Crystal a second chance? Jazzy wanted him to give Crystal a second chance? Then fine, he’d give the woman a second chance. He’d let her stay at the house and he’d let her back into Jazzy’s life, but that was it. He had no feelings left for his ex-wife. All that went to Sarah, and now she was leaving him too.

What the hell was wrong with him that he picked women who couldn’t love him back? What did it say about him?

“You love too damn easily, Walker,” he growled under his breath. “It’s time to take a page from Sarah’s book, stop wearing your heart on your sleeve, and stop expecting to find true love.”

Somehow, Sarah made it up to her room in one piece. She got undressed, took a shower, blew dry her new hairstyle, which now felt like a huge mistake, and put on her pajamas. She opened her notebook computer, sat crossed-legged in the middle of the bed surrounded by smiling angels. The Merry Cherub indeed.

She opened the file of
The Christmas Angel
and stared at the blinking cursor. She was almost finished. All she needed was the ending. A Christmas miracle to save her heroine Lily’s life.

A knock sounded on her door.

Oh crap, please, please don’t let it be Travis.
If the man was standing in the hallway outside her door she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from yanking him into the room and hauling him into her bed.

The knock came again. Maybe it was Jenny Cantrell or Travis’s Aunt Raylene or one of the other ladies from the cookie club who’d just gotten the gossip hot off the grapevine.

She got out of bed, padded to the door, and peeked through the keyhole.

It wasn’t Travis. Neither was it Jenny or Raylene or any of the members of the First Love Cookie Club.

Instead, she spied Travis’s ex-wife, Crystal Hunt.

Every instinct in her body told her to crawl back in bed, cover up her head, and pretend she was deaf. What the hell did the woman want with her?

Rap, rap, rap.

Sarah thought of Poe’s raven tapping at her chamber door.
Go away!

“Miss Cool,” Crystal called. “May I talk to you?”

Sighing, Sarah opened the door, but she did not smile. “How may I help you?”

“Could I come in?”

Sarah stood aside and gestured toward the overstuffed chair covered in pink angel print. Crystal crossed the threshold and then plunked down in the chair. Sarah closed the door, but remained standing.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Crystal said. She wore thick mascara and too much rouge. Her skin was pale and her platinum blond hair was the texture of dried grass. “The girl who interrupted our wedding.”

“Yep, that’s me. Wedding crasher.”

“You’re still in love with him.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

Sarah shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.

“I thought so.” Crystal nodded as if Sarah had said yes.

“What do you want?” Sarah didn’t even try to sound polite.

“I just wanted you to know I’m not the villain everyone in this town paints me to be.” She stuck a fingernail in her mouth to gnaw at a ragged cuticle. “They judge me. I know they do. Mothers aren’t supposed to run off and leave their babies.”

“So why did you?”

Crystal blushed, shamefaced. “I shouldn’t have. I know that, but I just couldn’t deal with Jasmine’s illness. She kept getting worse and worse and you don’t know what I’ve been through. No one does.”

“Could it be any worse than what Jazzy’s gone through?” Sarah folded her arms over her chest. Why was this woman here? Was she expecting sympathy from her?

“Travis was good to me, you know. He was funny, lots of fun.”

“He’s a good guy.”

Crystal nodded, kept working on that cuticle. “He helped me pick up the pieces of my life.”

Anger spurted through Sarah; she was surprised at how angry she was at this woman she didn’t even know. All she knew was that Crystal had hurt both Jazzy and Travis very deeply. “And you repaid him by leaving him just when he needed you most.”

“I suppose I deserve that.” Crystal winced. “But you don’t know what it’s like, sitting there day after day watching your baby slowly dying.”

“I don’t,” Sarah agreed, “but Travis does.”

“I’m not just talking about Jazzy.” Crystal leaned forward, rested her forearms on her thighs, and dropped her head.

Her words startled Sarah. The woman looked so helpless, damaged. “What?”

“I had another baby. Before Jazzy. Before Travis.”

Sarah said nothing, just waited, and the story poured from Crystal’s lips. “Most people don’t know about this. I wasn’t living in Twilight at the time. I don’t talk about it much.” She hauled in a shuddering breath. “I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Travis.”

Reluctant sympathy washed over Sarah. She did not want to feel sorry for this woman, but it wasimpossible to deny how utterly broken she looked. Who was she to say how she might have behaved if she’d been in Crystal’s shoes?

Crystal slowly opened her mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. Sarah could see how difficult this was for her. “I got pregnant when I was seventeen by my boss where I worked at the Chicken Shack. When I told him I was pregnant, he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with it and for me to have an abortion. He was married with two kids already.” Crystal stared off into space. “But I wanted that baby.”

Crystal lapsed into silence. Sarah didn’t know what to say so she kept quiet.

Finally, Crystal shook herself and continued in a rushed monotone. “Here’s what happened. I had the baby on my own. My parents kicked me out. It was hard, but that baby was worth it. I loved that boy more than I loved life itself. He had dark brown eyes and jet black hair. He looked just like this daddy. He’d give me the biggest hugs and his smile was like sunshine. He smelled so good, like cotton blankets and fluffy bunnies. He was my pride and joy.”

Pausing, Crystal ran a hand through her hair, then whispered, “His name was Shiloh. Shiloh James.”

Sarah felt a stab of pain straight to her heart.
Detach, detach, detach.
But it was too late. Being with Travis had demolished the barriers she’d put up to keep her safe from her feelings. She had no defenses left.

Tears were streaming down Crystal’s face. Sarah reached over and handed Crystal the box of tissues from her nightstand.

“Thank you.” Crystal sniffled.

“You don’t have to tell me any more.”

“No, I want you to know. I want you to understand.”

Sarah suppressed a sigh. She didn’t want to know.

“Me and Shiloh lived in government-funded housing across a main street from a park. He loved being pushed in the swings. I’d push him and he’d say, ‘Higher, Mommy, higher.’ He was smart as a whip, always figuring things out. When he was one year old he learned how to turn on the light switch with the handle of a broom. Then just a couple months shy of his second birthday …” She stopped, hitched in another breath, swiped at the tears. Mascara smeared underneath her eyes. “I thought he was in his crib. I’d put him down for a nap. It was in the spring and I had the windows open. I was watching TV and folding clothes, when there was a knock on the door and I open it up and it’s a policeman and he’s holding …” Crystal hiccupped, paused, then finally said, “He’s holding Shiloh’s little blue striped shirt with the bunnies on the pocket and there’s blood on the front of it.”