Susan Mallery - Only His

Her sisters exchanged a glance. If Nevada put her mind to it, she could probably figure out what they were thinking. After all, they were genetically the same. But right now all that concerned her were the smells drifting back from Jo’s small kitchen.

“Nevada,” Montana began, her voice gentle.

That was all it took. A single word. Nevada shook her head. Why couldn’t she be like other people and hate her family? At the moment, a good estrangement sounded like the perfect plan.

“Fine,” she grumbled. “The interview wasn’t with Mr. Janack, aka Elliot, the father. It was with Tucker.”

“That’s the guy who was friends with Ethan all those years ago?” Dakota asked. She sounded as if she wasn’t completely sure of her facts. That was reasonable, considering her only encounter with Tucker would have been over a summer, back when they were kids.

“I don’t get it,” Montana said. “He’s in charge now?”

“Running the whole project,” Nevada said, still watching the door leading to the kitchen.

“Why is he a problem?” Dakota asked.

Nevada abandoned her hope for food anytime soon and faced her sisters. “I know Tucker. When I went off to college, Ethan told me to look him up, which I did.”

“Okay,” Montana said, sounding confused. “But isn’t knowing him a good thing?”

“I slept with him. Let me just say, that makes for an awkward interview.”

Jo appeared with the quesadilla and several napkins. She set herbal tea in front of Dakota and gave a diet soda to Montana. After placing a basket of chips and bowl of salsa in the middle of the table, she left.

Nevada picked up a slice of the quesadilla and took a bite, ignoring her sisters’ wide-eyed stares.

“Not today,” Montana said in a whisper. “You’re not saying you slept with him today.”

Nevada finished chewing and swallowed. “No. I didn’t have sex during my interview. It was before. Back in college.”

She ate some more while her sisters stared at her expectantly. Montana cracked first.

“What happened?” she demanded. “You never told us this.”

Nevada wiped her hands on a napkin, then took a sip of her drink. The buzz was stronger now, which would make exposing her secret easier.

“When I left for college, Ethan asked me to look up Tucker. He was working in the area.”

Although she and her sisters had been extremely close, they’d made the decision to go to three different colleges. The four years apart had given them the chance to solidify their identities, or some such crap, she thought hazily. While it had seemed like a good idea at the time, now she wondered if things would have gone better with one of her sisters around.

“I wasn’t especially interested in spending time with a friend of his,” she continued, “but he kept bugging me, so I did. I called Tucker and we agreed to meet.”

She still remembered walking into the huge open room in the industrial complex. The ceilings had probably been thirty feet high, with light spilling in from all the windows. There’d been a huge platform in the middle and a beautiful woman wielding a blowtorch. But what had caught Nevada’s attention was the man standing by the platform. The grown-up Tucker was very different from the kid she’d remembered.

“It was one of those things,” she said, taking another bite of the quesadilla, chewing and swallowing. “I took one look at him and fell head over heels. I didn’t have a chance.”

Montana leaned toward her. “That’s not a bad thing, right?”

“It is when the guy in question is madly in love with someone else. He had a girlfriend.” If one could give Cat such a pedestrian title. “I was crazy about him, and he was wild over her and she wanted to be my friend. It was hell.”

“Who was she?” Dakota asked. “Another student?”

Nevada shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” No way was she going to say the name. There was a chance they would recognize it and Cat wasn’t anyone Nevada wanted to talk about.

“I hung out with them a few times,” she said. “Then I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I pulled back. One night I heard they broke up and I went to see Tucker. He was seriously drunk and we had very bad sex.”

She didn’t mention that she’d basically thrown herself at him. And that, looking back, she was a little surprised he’d even remembered it was her. After all, he’d called Cat’s name at the crucial moment.

She sighed. “It was a mess. They got back together, I was crushed and that was it. I never saw either of them again. Until today.”

There was so much more. The fact that Tucker had chosen Cat over her. Not a surprise, really. Cat was beautiful and larger than life and they’d been together first. Still, Nevada had been heartbroken and humiliated. Plus, the sex really had been awful. So bad that she’d waited nearly three years before risking getting intimate again.

“I wanted the job,” she said, picking up her drink. “I wanted the chance.”

“You don’t know he won’t hire you,” Montana told her. “You’re the best candidate.”

“I don’t think that’s a deciding factor.”

Dakota sipped her tea. “Was it hard to see him again?”

“It was a shock. I was expecting his father. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”

“No.”

Nevada considered the unasked question. “I’m over him. It was a long time ago and I was young and foolish. Everything is different now.”

“There aren’t any lingering feelings?” Dakota asked.

“Not even one.”

Nevada spoke as firmly as a nearly drunk person could. The good news was, she was pretty sure she wasn’t even lying.

TUCKER HAD NEVER THOUGHT much about small-town America. Mostly his work took him to remote places, where they had to create their own infrastructure to get the job done, or to urban areas, often those that were crumbling. He wasn’t used to cheerful storefronts and friendly people strolling along clean sidewalks. In the ten minutes it had taken him to get from his hotel to the center of town, he’d been greeted multiple times, told to have a good day, asked if the weather could be any better and nuzzled by a tiny toy poodle in a pink sweater.

He’d been to Fool’s Gold before, back when he was about sixteen. Tucker’s mom had died when he was pretty little, so his dad had taken him along on construction jobs. He’d grown up all over the world, getting his education through local classes and tutors. His dad had worried that he wasn’t socializing enough with kids his own age, so every summer Tucker was sent to a different camp in the States. One year it was space camp, another had been a drama camp. The year he’d turned sixteen, his father sent him to a cycling camp, where he met Ethan Hendrix and Josh Golden.

The three of them had hung out all summer. Josh and Ethan had both been serious about cycling. Josh had gone on to make a career of it. Tucker had gone into the family business, and went where the next big project was. Ethan had stayed in Fool’s Gold.

Tucker crossed a narrow street and saw the sign for Hendrix Construction. Back in high school, Ethan had planned to go to college, then get the hell out of Fool’s Gold. He and Tucker had talked about Ethan coming to work for Janack Construction. They’d daydreamed about a dam they’d build in South America or a bridge in India. Instead, Ethan’s father had died, leaving Ethan responsible for running the family business. As the oldest of six kids, with a heartbroken mother, Ethan hadn’t had a whole lot of choices.

Tucker opened the door to the construction office and smiled at the receptionist sitting behind the desk. “I’d like to see Nevada, please.”

He’d arrived early enough in the morning to catch her before she headed to a job site, but still expected to be asked if he had an appointment. Instead, the receptionist pointed toward a door at the rear of the big room.

“She’s in her office.”

“Thanks.”

He circled around a couple of empty desks and knocked on the open door.

Nevada stood with her back to him, pulling out a file drawer. In the second it took her to turn, he saw she wore jeans and a T-shirt instead of the trousers and blazer from the day before. Heavy work boots added a couple of inches of height, bringing her closer to his eye level. She was tall and lean, with curves in all the right places.

Attractive, he thought absently. Sexy. And she’d probably been back in college. Not that he would have noticed. Being around Cat had been like looking at the sun — he couldn’t see anything else. Life would have been a whole lot easier if he’d fallen for someone normal like Nevada instead of Cat.

As Nevada spun to face him, he noticed she wasn’t wearing much in the way of makeup and her face was pale.

“Good morning.”

She blinked at him. “Maybe for you.”

Her eyes were red and looked a little puffy. Judging by the shadows underneath, he guessed she’d had a difficult night.

“Hangover?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Had she been out drinking because of him? Well, them. He hoped he was the cause of her morning pain. If only for proof that their meeting had affected her as much as it had affected him.

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” she told him.

“Why?”

“You’re looking smug. It’s annoying. In fact, you should go away. Why are you here, anyway? Are you looking for Ethan?”

“I’m looking for you.”

She touched her forehead, as if trying to rub away pain. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Sure you can.”

Despite the dark circles and her pallor, she was still appealing. He liked Nevada in jeans and a T-shirt, rather than dressed for an interview. These clothes were more like the woman he remembered.