Charlotte Claira Sh epard insisted on making the breakfast she’d invited me to herself. All I had to do was sit there while she fluttered around her kitchen like the physical embodiment of sunshine, her big hair and bigger pearls glowing gold in the early morning light streaming in through the kitchen windows. “Are you sure I can’t help?” I offered for the umpteenth time, my fingers wrapped around a cup of the most divine coffee. “I’m not completely useless behind a stove. Although my brothers always complain that my pancakes are too salty.” She laughed but shook her head. “I’ll be done in two shakes. Before you leave, I’ll give you my pancake recipe. It’s completely foolproof, but you might have to be pr epared to make it every day. Your brothers will ke ep begging.” “That doesn’t sound too bad.” She shot me a glance over her shoulder, but the next moment, breakfast was ready and I was treated to enough food for a family of six. Biscuits, honey butter, bacon so crisp it snapped, and grits so creamy I was pretty sure they violated several laws of physics. “This looks amazing,” I said honestly as she put the plate down in front of me. “Wow. Thank you.” “You’re welcome, sugar.” She smiled and lowered herself into a seat across from mine at their kitchen table, her plate not piled nearly as high. “Make sure you have all those biscuits. You’re just a wisp of a thing. Trent has been working you too hard, hasn’t he?” I chuckled into my coffee. “He hasn’t even made me pick up a shovel just yet.” “Yet,” she echoed knowingly, smiling behind her mug like she had decades of Sh epard-family secrets stored between her dimples. “It’s only a matter of time. Well, dig in, darlin’. It’s not going to eat itself.” As soon as I set the coffee down and picked up my cutlery, she shot me an approving smile, then proceeded to mostly watch me eat while she drank coffee, chatted, and picked at her food like a baby bird. The more time I spent with her, the more I understood why Trent was the way he was, polite, feet flat on the ground, and quietly confident. Claira was all steel wrapped in velvet. Still, even with her effortless sophistication, she seemed curious. Eager, even. Like she wanted to ask me a hundred things all at once and I’d bet my inheritance that those questions were mostly about my relationship with Trent. Every time I mentioned him, even in passing, her eyes sparkled a little, but she held back. For now. I wasn’t sure she would last the hour. She didn’t make it two more minutes. “So, how are you and Trent doing, honey? You two seem to be getting along just fine.” Her tone was carefully neutral, but her grin was not. That grin was wide and excited, like she already had the wedding halfway planned. I blushed behind my biscuit. “He’s very kind to me.” “Kind? Oh, honey, he’s something, alright.” Her voice had a tone mothers used when they were thinking about stories their children would die if they
r epeated. “I’m just not sure kind is enough to cut it.” The heat on my cheeks intensified, but as I looked at her, I realized she knew everything about his past. The things he didn’t talk about. The things that had made him shut down in the truck last night and that he didn’t want me asking about. But curiosity was a terrible, unstoppable force. After about twenty more minutes of Claira pretending not to vibrate in her chair with barely restrained wedding-planner energy, I finally decided to just go for it. She could shut me down too if she wanted, so I set down my fork and tried to sound casual. “Claira, can I ask you something?” Her brows shot up, but it didn’t look like surprise. To me, it looked a lot more like delight. “Of course, darling. Shoot. What’s on your mind?” I took a breath. “Who is Savannah?” The effect of saying that name was immediate, almost like I’d slapped her with a wet dish towel. Her whole body went still. Her smile vanished and even the air in the kitchen seemed to flatten. She recovered quickly, her smile reappearing a beat later, but her eyes were sharp when they met mine again. “Did Trent mention her to you?” she asked. I shook my head. “No. We saw her yesterday at the club. She came over to say hi, but it didn’t seem like a friendly sort of greeting.” Claira muttered, “I’m shocked that piranha showed her face in Dallas again.” Suddenly rising from the table, she spun toward her pantry and started pulling out flour, sugar, butter. Basically, everything she needed to bake something elaborate and stress busting. A coping mechanism, if I had to guess. I watched her set out bowls and whisks like she was d eploying weapons. “Claira,” I said gently, r epeating the question. “Who is she?” She ignored me at first, or maybe she was just pretending to. It was hard to tell. She cracked two eggs with more force than strictly necessary, but when she finally looked up, her expression was pained. Protective. Maternal. “It’s complicated,” she finally said before she went back to what she was making. “Isn’t everything?” She gave me a smile so tired that it made me feel terrible for bringing it up. Clearly, there was a story there, and it was definitely one that mattered, but if it hurt them all too much to talk about, I wouldn’t ke ep pushing. That knot of possessive jealousy in my gut melted into disappointment, because if even his mother couldn’t talk about this woman, then Trent surely couldn’t be ready to move on. Not that he was doing that with me anyway, but after these last few days together, maybe I’d hoped. After Claira had measured flour twice and forgotten both measurements, she sighed, leaned against the counter, and finally started talking. “Savannah was the love of Trent’s life for a time,” she said, folding her arms. “She comes from a very respectable family. Old oil money like ours. She was polished, pretty, and sharp as a tack, and I thought, Lord help us, this girl is it.”
I stayed quiet, not wanting to push any more than I already had. Plus, the awesome, creamy grits seemed to be going sour in my stomach. I reached for my coffee to hide the unexpected sting of pain that zapped through me. The love of his life. “She and Trent were together off and on for a couple years, but we never pressured him,” she continued. “Not at first. They were so young and they were both happy. We just assumed marriage would be coming eventually. Everyone did, and when he didn’t propose, well, after about two years, Troy and I started wondering. And then—” She broke off, swallowing hard and literally reaching for her pearls. A pit of doom opened up in my stomach. “Then what?” She hesitated. “I didn’t learn this from Trent directly, so it may not be the full truth, but there was a baby in volved.” My breath stopped, my lungs instantly went on strike, and my heart slammed against my ribs so loudly I was sure she could hear it. A baby? I finally found my voice but barely. “Was it, uh, was the baby his?” Claira braced both hands against the countertop and closed her eyes like she needed a second to summon full southern emotional fortitude. Then she straightened, went to the fridge, and pulled out a chilled bottle of white wine. At ten in the morning. And she didn’t even pretend it was for cooking. “Oh, honey,” she murmured, grabbing two glasses and filling them both nearly to the brim. “You’re going to need this.” Claira took a long swallow of her wine before setting the glass down with a soft clink. Her eyes drifted toward the window, like she was watching ghosts wander across the lawn. “They were only twenty-three,” she began quietly. “Young but old enough to know better. Or at least, that’s what I thought, but they’d been dating seriously for years when Savannah announced she was pregnant.” My heartbeat thudded in my ears, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Claira looked up, her eyes misty as she shook her head. “Trent married her.” My eyes slammed shut. I couldn’t help it. It felt like someone had punched me in the chest and yet she k ept going. “He started having the plans drawn up for that big house of his and gave her access to all his money. He did everything right.” She pressed her lips together, pride and regret warring on her beautiful features. “Everything.” I couldn’t speak, but at least my eyes were open again. My lungs were still refusing to work properly, though. “Within a few months of the announcement and the quick wedding that followed, the scandal ripped through every circle they were part of. Savannah was having an affair.”
My chest tightened. She sighed. “With one of Trent’s good friends.” I winced. God. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Savannah wasn’t even sure if Trent was the father,” she said, her voice now thin with disgust. “Apparently, she’d simply felt that he was the more stable option. The better name. The better life, but after a little digging...” She gave a humorless laugh and took another gigantic gulp of her wine. “I found out she’d been spending Trent’s money as fast as he could make it. Tens of thousands. Using her socalled business trips for her boutique in Dallas to take lavish vacations with her affair partner.” My throat closed. Poor Trent. My Trent—Wait, no. Not my anything. “The baby was three months old when Trent found out he wasn’t the father.” I put a hand against my stomach, nausea swirling through me. I hadn’t been planning on drinking the wine she’d poured me, but she’d been right. I needed it. So I reached for my glass and took a page out of her book, tipping almost a quarter of the glass into my mouth in one long sip. “He was willing to raise the baby anyway,” Claira said. “To stay in the marriage. To be a father, a protector. He was ready to shoulder all of it, but we forced him to end it. To let them both go.” She looked ashamed, but not of him. Of herself. “We withheld his inheritance and his access to the family money. He wouldn’t get the ranch unless he ended it.” The words rang in my head like a cruel bell. He’d lost everything, his marriage, the child he’d thought was his, and a friend, and his family had pushed him to let it all burn. I swallowed hard, bile cre eping up my throat. I swallowed it down with more wine. All this time, I’d thought Trent was just grumpy, dry, emotionally unavailable, and annoyingly stoic. A man who’d chosen loneliness. I’d had no idea that he’d been gutted. I drained my glass, torn. Claira quickly refilled my wine all the way to the brim again before she pushed the glass back toward me. “He was willing to give it all up for puppy love,” she said softly. “Savannah was the one who eventually pulled the plug on the whole thing when Trent’s money started drying up. She’d bled him dry and then she moved right on. Divorced him and married her affair partner, who’s now quite wealthy after investing all that money Trent gave her.” Her lip curled ever so slightly. “Last I heard, they moved to Florida. Boca, I think. Trent eventually got the marriage annulled. There’s no record of it. Only whispers.” She sighed. “It’s been so long now. Ten years or so.” She k ept talking, telling me something about how Trent had never brought another woman home after that, how he’d poured his heart into the ranch, but her voice began to fade out, her words blurring into each other as my heart sprinted. A baby. A marriage. Betrayal. Public humiliation. Financial ruin. A mother forcing her son to let a child go. A woman who used him, hollowed him out, then threw him away. Trent. Oh, Trent. So this was why he’d barely been able to look at Savannah last night and why he’d shut down the second I’d mentioned her. He’d done everything right and it’d backfired in the most catastrophic way.
I felt sick. After finishing my wine, I stood up and managed a small, probably watery smile. “I think I need to get some air. I’m not used to drinking this early. Thank you for breakfast, Claira.” She lifted her glass to me in response. “Any time, honey.” As I practically stumbled out her back door, I saw her sink down at the kitchen table, a faraway look on her face and her glass clutched in her hand. The heat hit me like a wall when I st epped outside, but it wasn’t enough to burn off the knot of anger tightening in my chest. I walked and walked, rage building with each st ep until it was blooming beneath my skin, ugly, hot, and protective. How could someone do that to him? How could she take all that good, all that softness he hid, and twist it until it broke? Unintentionally winding up at the stables, I felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t move, so when I saw the tack room unlocked, one of the gentler geldings already saddled from earlier chores, I didn’t even think. I just went for him, grabbing the reins with trembling fingers, my chest so tight it was like the air itself resented me. I led him out of the stall, whispering apologies I didn’t even know were for him, Trent, or myself. “Charlotte.” Trent’s voice cracked through the barn like a whip. “Horse theft is still a hanging offense in Texas.” My whole body went rigid, but I turned slowly. Trent stood in the aisle with his hat in his hand, damp with sweat from work, but his eyes were laser focused on me. I knew what he must be looking at, that my face was probably flushed and contorted with the rage pounding through my veins. “What are you doing?” he asked slowly. “And what’s wrong?” Everything. Everything is wrong. My voice wouldn’t come out, though. He st epped closer, a lot gentler this time. “Charlotte? I was kidding about the hanging. I mean, it’s a real law, but I know you’re not stealing Chili P epper.” For some reason, maybe because I knew what he’d survived or because I’d been walking a tightrope of feelings I didn’t understand, I snapped. “I’m furious, that’s what’s wrong!” I exploded, the words ripping out of me before I could stop them. “Absolutely livid.” “Livid?” Those blue eyes widened a fraction. “At who?” “You!” I hurled the word at him like it might land and shatter on the floor. “I’m mad at you, Trent.” He stared at me like I’d spoken a language he didn’t understand, his chest rising and falling a little faster and his jaw tightening, but he didn’t yell back and he didn’t interrupt. Somehow, that just made me angrier. Every moment we’d shared burned with white-hot meaning after I’d found out what had happened in his past, but maybe it was just me. Savannah had broken his heart once upon a time, and for minute there, I’d hoped the damage hadn’t been irr eparable.
But now, as he stared at me with those blue eyes blazing and his hands sliding into the pockets of his dusty jeans, I had to wonder. Was all the chemistry between us nothing more than a figment of my imagination? Was he even capable of feeling anything for a woman anymore, and if he was, was that woman still Savannah? Did he still love her and did anybody else even stand a chance? Right now, I honestly didn’t even know, but I was determined to find out.