A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father. Karen Templeton

thought as Thea picked up, her “Tess? What’s wrong?” delivered in the groggy voice of the mother of a one-year-old still not entirely down with the concept of sleeping through the night.

      “Please tell me I didn’t just wake you up.”

      “For you to do that, I’d’ve had to have been—” Thea yawned “—asleep.” In the background, little Jonny happily squawked. “And you’re calling when the sun’s not even up yet, why?”

      “Omigod, it isn’t, is it?” Tess said, realizing that until that very moment, she hadn’t thought her embarrassment level could spike any higher. She’d been wrong. “I have a huge favor to ask,” she whispered. “First off, I need you to swear to anyone who might ask that I was at your place last night.”

      Silence. “Why? You kill somebody?”

      “Worse,” Tess muttered. “So will you?”

      “Long as it doesn’t involve the word ‘accessory’ in some way, sure, but—”

      “And is there any way you could come pick me up and take me back home?”

      More silence. “Um…pick you up from where?”

      Somehow Tess doubted Thea’d buy her having spent the night by the side of the road. “Eli Garrett’s.”

      “Lord, now I know I’m not awake yet. I could’ve sworn you said—”

      “I did.”

      That got a far-too-gleeful cackle. “This just keeps gettin’ better and better.”

      “Can you pick me up or not?”

      “Do I have to put on makeup?”

      “God, no.”

      “Then I’ll be there in a few. Hang tight, honey.”

      Tess had no sooner shut her phone than she heard behind her, “I’m not good enough to take you home?”

      She turned. And while Eli’s insouciant smile and slouch against the door frame with his hands in his pockets might’ve said Like I give a damn, the sting of hurt in his eyes told another story entirely. What the hell?

      “Oh, right,” Tess said, dropping onto the edge of the embarrassingly rumpled bed to lace up her running shoes. “Like there’d be any way to explain to Enrique why you were bringing me home at the crack of dawn.”

      “He’s there?”

      “Brought the kids back early, yup.” Slapping her hands on her thighs, she looked up. “Lucky me.”

      “Guess that makes two of us,” he said, and Tess almost—almost—cringed at the bitterness spiking his words. “Because God knows I’m the last person you’d want to be associated with—”

      “And don’t even go there,” Tess said, getting to her feet. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me not having the energy to deal with Ricky this early in the morning. It’s also about me feeling like an idiot. Not because I slept with you, but because I…fell apart—”

      He grinned. Not one of his best, but bright enough. “Several times, as I recall.”

      “Shut up,” Tess said, her face flaming, her nether regions tingling. Damn them. Fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. “I used you, Eli. And I feel like crap about it.”

      His grin died. “And didn’t I tell you this is exactly how you’d feel this morning? Although when you first came at me I sincerely doubted you’d be around for longer than twenty minutes—”

      She grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at him. It went wide and scared the bejeebers out of the cat.

      “It’s not meant as a put-down, okay?” Eli said, swiping the pillow off the floor, tossing it back on the bed. “You were obviously upset. And a little drunk. I knew what you were asking for, even before you made it more than clear my hunch’d been dead-on. And if you noticed, I had no problem stepping up to the plate.”

      Too true, Tess thought as Eli came farther into the room, making her back up. A little. “Even so, I gave you plenty of opportunity to change your mind, to let me take you home before things got out of hand. Or maybe you don’t remember—”

      “I remember,” she murmured, shutting her eyes.

      “You know,” Eli said after a moment, “maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad if you’d just be honest about what happened last night. It was what it was. If I don’t have a problem with that, why should you?” At the sound of Thea’s old Jeep Cherokee pulling up in front of Eli’s house, he nodded toward the window. “There’s your ride,” he said, snatching a hooded sweatshirt off the back of a chair and tossing it over. “It’s cold. Put that on.” Then he stomped off, boots pounding against the old wooden floor.

      “Eli, I’m sorry—!”

      Too late.

      Soon as she heard stuff banging around in the kitchen, Tess scurried down the hall and through the front door, yanking on the hoodie as she practically flew into Thea’s passenger seat. No fewer than three dogs of various sizes, shapes and lineages poked their heads through the gap between the bucket seats to offer greetings and/or condolences.

      “Geez, mutts,” the tiny blonde—wearing a down vest over wrinkled pink pajamas—said, shoving back assorted canine heads, “give the poor woman a break.” She surveyed Tess for a few moments through a pair of perky round sunglasses before looking back out the windshield, her mouth twitching. “Rough night?”

      Tess slumped down in her seat, snuggling farther into the warm, Eli-scented sweatshirt. Rats. “I seriously owe you for this.”

      “Think that’s the other way around, cookie,” Thea said as she backed out of Eli’s drive. “Considering the backside-saving you did a couple months ago when everybody got the flu except the baby.”

      “Where is junior, anyway?”

      “Back there somewhere, between the dogs.” Startled, Tess twisted around to see the bundled up baby happily snoozing in his car seat. Thea cackled again. “Wow. This is just like high school, gettin’ a girlfriend to cover your butt so your mother won’t find out you went to some party you weren’t supposed to.”

      “Yeah, well…I never did that.”

       “Never?”

      “You weren’t raised by a rabid Latina. My mother had spies everywhere.” Because that was a lot easier and less messy than personal interaction. Gah, at this rate her brain would melt before breakfast. “I couldn’t even look at a boy that my mother didn’t hear about it before I got home.”

      “That sucks.”

      “Tell me about it.”

      Chuckling, Thea tucked a strand of barely combed, pale blond hair behind one ear as they pulled out onto the still-dark highway, the early-morning sun furtively peering through the pinons and live oaks choking the roadside. “So…what happened?”

      Tess rolled her eyes in the blonde’s direction.

      “I got that,” Thea said, shrugging a dog head off her shoulder. “It’s the how-in-the-hell? part I’m kinda vague on.”

      Shivering, Tess zipped the hoodie up higher. “So Ricky had the kids, right? Seizing my freedom, brief though it may have been, I went for a run, it started getting dark, Eli nearly ran me over with his truck, next thing I know I’m in his living room, stripping.”

       “Sober?”

      “No.”

      “Ah.” After a reflective moment, Thea glanced over. “I’m assuming there were bits between the almost getting run over and the stripping?”