It Happened One Night

Kiley frowned. “Now, hold it. Didn’t you tell Mom and Dad that he broke your heart when he ended things with you?”

There was a long pause before her sister answered. “Well, it didn’t exactly happen the way I told Mom and Dad. You know they’re convinced that I make some pretty poor choices in my relationships.”

“It must run in the family,” Kiley muttered, unable to stop herself.

“Hey, Mark Roberts was the only guy you dated that they didn’t approve of,” Lori reminded her. “And we both know they were right about him.”

Kiley took a deep breath. She didn’t want to discuss her brief marriage. “Tell me the real story behind your breakup with Josh.”

“We had been dating for a couple of months, but there were times when we’d go for a week or so without seeing each other.” Lori paused, then went on. “You know me. I got bored. I sort of started going out with someone else and everything was going great. I saw Josh when we could get together and the other guy when we couldn’t.” She sighed audibly. “At least, everything was going great until Josh caught us.”

“Lori!”

“I know, it was a dumb thing to do,” her sister said, sounding contrite. “When Josh found out I was seeing this other guy, I begged him to let me tell Mom and Dad that he was the one who lost interest and ended things between us.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to listen to them tell me that I’d screwed up again.” Lori sighed. “Josh and I both knew it wasn’t a forever kind of relationship from the beginning. When I asked him to help me save face by going along with me telling everyone that he’d found someone else and dumped me, he was really nice and agreed.”

Kiley couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “So all this time, we’ve been thinking that he’s a snake in an Armani suit, when in fact he was innocent of doing anything wrong?”

“That just about sums it up,” Lori admitted. “Please don’t tell Mom and Dad. Things are going great with Sean and I and I’d rather not have strained relations with them when I take him to meet them at the end of this week.”

“Don’t worry. It’s your place to tell them what really happened—not mine,” Kiley assured her sister. “I’ve never been a tattletale and I’m not going to start now. But Josh doesn’t deserve their condemnation and they deserve to know the truth. You really should set the record straight.” She didn’t like lying to anyone, but especially not to their parents.

“I know, and I promise I’ll confess soon.” She paused. “I’d better go. Sean is here to take me to brunch. Give Emmie hugs and kisses for me.”

“I will,” Kiley said absently as she ended the call.

How could everything that she’d been so certain about change so quickly?

She had never questioned that Mark was Emmie’s father. Hadn’t even given it a second thought. But now she knew there was every likelihood that he wasn’t. She had also never doubted, until recently, that Josh was the unfeeling jerk who had broken her sister’s heart. Finding out that he had been the innocent party in their breakup, yet he’d been generous enough to allow Lori to make him out to be the bad guy in order to save face with their parents, was almost more than Kiley could comprehend.

What else had she been wrong about? And why was she so darned relieved to hear that Josh wasn’t a heartbreaking reptile after all?

Five

Josh cursed the weather as he made his way across the ice-covered mud at the job site for the new Duncan Brothers Western Wear store. Hot one week, cold the next, it had been nothing short of bizarre for the past several weeks. But today it had taken a particularly nasty turn. It had been raining since before daylight, but it had only been in the past hour that it started sleeting. With the temperature steadily dropping all day, it had finally reached the freezing point and conditions were deteriorating rapidly. Deciding it was just too dangerous for his men to walk the iron girders of the structure, he’d made the decision to shut the job down for the day and send the crew home. No building was worth risking a man’s life.

Climbing into his SUV, he quickly dialed the Gordon Construction offices. “Sam, I’ve shut down the Duncan job site and I’m heading home,” he said without preamble.

“I figured that was going to happen,” his twin brother agreed. “I’m getting ready to go by the clubhouse and pick up Lila, then head home. She had a yoga class at the gym for pregnant mothers and as bad as the roads are getting, I don’t want her trying to drive.”