Page 22 of Talulah's Back in Town

She turned away from the window. “I couldn’t tell you, either. It—it happened so fast.”

“It’s over now,” he said, hoping to reassure her.

She nodded as she stared at the broken lamp. The frame of the picture that’d fallen was cracked, but there’d been no glass in it. So that was good, at least. “Maybe I owe you an apology,” she muttered. “You probably weren’t thinking straight when you were in the shower last night. I should’ve said no.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. It was my fault.”

“You’d hit your head. You had a concussion.”

He touched her arm so she’d look up at him. “I knew what I was doing.”

“Still, that’s how we’ll have to play it,” she said, sounding more and more assured as she spoke. “It’s the only way wecanplay it. Or he’ll never forgive you.”

Brant remembered promising her he wouldn’t tell a soul. Now she was volunteering to be the fall guy? “What are you talking about? I’m not going to blame you. That wouldn’t be fair.”

She went to the kitchen and came back with a broom, which he took from her.

“You need to go put on some shoes first,” he said.

She didn’t argue. But neither did she go after her shoes. Stepping away from the glass, she found a chair. “I’m already a lost cause where Charlie and the rest of Coyote Canyon are concerned. But if you act as though you didn’t know what was going on, this shouldn’t affect you.”

“How do I act as if I didn’t know what was going on?” he asked.

“You just make a big deal of the concussion, say you were out of it.”

He grimaced. “No way. I’m not going to make it sound like you took advantage of me. That’s ridiculous!”

Her chest lifted as she drew a deep breath. “Then just...refuse to address it.”

“How will that solve anything?”

“I’ll have Jane spread the word that you had a concussion when you stayed over, and town gossip and conjecture will take care of the rest.”

“People will ask me about it.”

“And you’ll tell them you don’t remember what happened. You’re one of Coyote Canyon’s own. In their eyes, I’m already a pariah. Whynothave it go this way?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

Raising her chin in a show of stubbornness, she held his gaze. “Do you want to lose your best friend?”

Squeezing his eyes closed, he rubbed his temples. “Of course not. But the truth is the truth. I was the one who asked you.”

“I hurt Charlie when I stood him up at the altar,” she said softly. “I don’t want to take his best friend away from him, too.”

Brant could see the logic in what she was saying. If she was never going back to Charlie, it didn’t matter if Charlie blamed her for this. Plus, she was only in town for a month, so the pain, for her, would be short-lived. But then he’d come out of this with no real consequences while she was made to look opportunistic and sexually aggressive—embarrassingly so.

He sighed as he touched the cut on his head from when he’d hit the low ceiling. “I hear what you’re saying. It just feels so creepy.”

“You can do it for Charlie, can’t you?”

“For Charlie, yes. But I’d benefit, too.”

“That’s okay. At this point, it’s about damage control. The punishment doesn’t have to be evenly distributed. So...are you in?”

Punishment.Last night shouldn’t have cost her anything. She didn’t owe Charlie her fidelity fourteen years after breaking off their relationship. But maybe this was her attempt to make up, at least a little, for what she’d done before. She was pushing him down the path that would hurt Charlie the least. But it was also the path that would hurt her the most.

He couldn’t help admiring her for trying to take the fall, but he also couldn’t accept her offer. “That won’t work, Talulah. Charlie, me, you...we’ll just have to deal with the truth.”

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