His Southern Temptation - By Robin Covington Page 0,65
check your meds.”
“Oh, my meds are fine.” She dismissed her with a giggle and wave off. “I just look at you chasing what you want and all I can think is, ‘I want that too.’ So, if you can make a hard choice and go back to Hawaii, I can spread my wings a little too.”
“Good for you.”
Taylor pushed down the lump of emotion lodged in her throat. Her mother had taken quite the body blow when her father had left, but her bravery was admirable. She could have stayed in Florida, but she’d come back to Elliott to face her demons and move on. Maybe her mother could reverse some of the regrets she had about her life.
There were so many things she was leaving behind—her mother starting over, the friends she’d made in Elliott, and most of all, Lucky. But this wasn’t about having it all. That wasn’t possible. This was about making the smart choice, the logical choice. Not the emotional or risky choice.
Looking out the window, the mountains towered in the background, their deep foliage shrouded in the bluish fog cover of early morning. Hawaii was beautiful and lush, but she would miss that ridge of peaks and valleys. She would miss so many things.
“Are you okay, Mary-Taylor?”
“I think so. I don’t know.” She leaned on the counter, swirling her coffee in the mug, trying to organize her thoughts.
She’d known this was going to be hard. She loved Lucky—no use in lying to herself about it—and that made any type of commitment with him terrifying. If she cared about him less, if he factored less in her happiness equation, then she might have stayed and figured out what to do about her career. But the risk that one day he would discard her and move on to something better and shinier was a risk she could not take. So, the logical choice was to leave and protect her heart.
“It’s not too late.” Marian said.
“Yes, it is. Just drop it.”
“Call Lucky. Talk to him. It can’t make this any worse.”
“Yes it can, Mother. It really can.”
The doorbell rang and Taylor jumped up to answer it. They’d already been over this, and she didn’t want to go over it again. Her mother called after her, but she missed it as she padded down the hallway, the wooden floorboards cool and smooth under her feet.
She opened the door, and the morning sunshine reflected off the bald head of her visitor. Her reflexes were too slow to close the door on his face. Apparently, her day was about to get worse.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Okay, boys. You need to get your butts out of my barn and stop scaring the animals.”
For the second time that week, Lucky woke in a strange place with a belligerent older man doing a loud impersonation of the world’s most annoying alarm clock. But this time he had a killer hangover, his father was the one delivering the obnoxious wake-up call, and Taylor was on a flight back to Hawaii. He rolled over on the hay bale he’d settled on last night to pass out, his head spinning in the opposite direction from the rest of the barn. Fun.
“Come on, ladies. The pity party is over and I’ve got a farm to run. So get moving.” Owen punctuated his words with a firm, jarring shake to Lucky’s shoulder, and from the gripes and groans behind him, Beck and Jack were getting the same treatment.
“Shit, Dad. Do you have to be so loud?” He sat up gingerly, a hand raised to shield his eyes from the glare of the morning, and caught his father prowling around the barn moving equipment loudly from one place to another. On the nearest hay bale, Beck was shirtless and sporting the beginnings of a shiner under his right eye. Jack sat, propped up against one of the horse stalls, his lower lip swollen and dried blood on the front of his shirt.
Lucky hurt all over.
“I’m no louder than you three jackasses were last night. It took me offering to watch one of those romantic comedies to keep your mama from coming down here to see what was going on.” He eyeballed all of them as he leaned against a piece of equipment, his crossed arms making him look huge. “Want to tell me why last night sounded like a cage fight and you all smell like the inside of a Jim Beam bottle?”
Beck and Jack looked toward Lucky, neither of them wanting to