And it wasn’t a rock band.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” he heard her say in a low voice when he got close to the billiard room Sunshine had disappeared into. “I don’t know. I said I don’t know.” She broke off and listened. “Because I have a lot to think over. Until I’m sure, I can’t answer you.” Another pause. “Look, that’s all I’m willing to say right now. I know you’re in a hurry. I—” She sighed. “Believe me, I know exactly how you feel. I’m right there with you.” She waited a beat. “Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow if I can. Bye.”
Cole hurried back to the table before Sunshine did, sat down and spooned a forkful of food into his mouth. Neither Evan nor Bella seemed to think anything was amiss and no one commented on the call when Sunshine returned. Meanwhile, Cole’s thoughts were in turmoil.
Who the hell was she talking to?
Had she met another man?
The evening passed at a crawl and though he could tell he would have enjoyed Evan and Bella’s company at any other time, the wait until bedtime was almost unbearable. Cole held it together until he and Sunshine crawled into bed, but when he opened his mouth to question her, she beat him to it.
“Did you ever think about having a dog?”
A dog? Who cared about dogs? “Of course,” he ground out. “I love dogs. So who—”
“What kind would you want to get?”
“I don’t know. A mutt? Look, Sunshine—”
“What kind of mutt?”
“Any kind!” Cole turned over. “Some big, yellow dog.”
“Yellow dog?” She sounded interested.
Cole couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. Why was she suddenly so obsessed with dogs? “Yellow dogs are happy dogs. Haven’t you noticed?” This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. He needed to confront her. She’d been talking with some stranger, telling him she didn’t know—
Cole broke off. She didn’t know… what kind of dog to get him?
Was this his Christmas surprise?
He relaxed back into the pillows and almost laughed out loud. No wonder the women looked so damn guilty. They must have been working on his Christmas present. After all, wasn’t that exactly what he and his friends were doing? He’d psyched himself out thinking it was something more complicated, but Sunshine hadn’t ever had a dog. Maybe she’d gotten her friends together to help her choose one. Maybe they were taking turns caring for it so he wouldn’t know. That would explain a lot of things.
“I have noticed that,” Sunshine said. “I like yellow dogs, too.”
Was she smiling? It sounded like it, but he couldn’t see. Relief flooded Cole. Sunshine wasn’t cheating on him.
Thank God.
“Cole,” she said suddenly. “Did you mean that about children? Do you really want a family? Because I didn’t think you did.”
He wanted to pull her into a hug. “Yeah, I want a family. Soon. First we need a house, though. I need a job, too. I want to make sure we can do this right.” They were treading on shaky ground now, though. He couldn’t talk about this stuff without talking about the wedding. That was supposed to be a conversation for Christmas morning. “Like you said before, let’s not talk about anything serious until after the holidays.”
When she spoke again her voice had gone flat. “Fine with me.”
“Hey—”
“You’re right; it’s no big deal. We’ll talk about it some other time.”
He propped himself up on one elbow, torn about what to do. He had a whole plan for making Christmas morning special, and if he broached marriage now, it would ruin it. “Sunshine, you know I love you, don’t you?”
“I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“You guess?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel like we’re on the same page these days.”
Alarmed, Cole sat upright. “What page are you on?”
She sat up too. “It’s more like what page have you traipsed onto?”
“I haven’t traipsed anywhere.”
“Are you sure you haven’t traipsed all over Fran?”
Cole snorted. “Is that what this is about? Fran? That was a hundred years ago. So I slept with her a few times—”
“A few hundred times.”
“You weren’t a virgin when I met you.” Cole clamped his mouth shut. Hell. That wasn’t going to go over well.
“Are you calling me a slut?” Sunshine scrambled away from him.
“No. Damn it, you know that’s not what I—”
She crawled right out of the bed. “Good night, Cole.”
“Wait. Sunshine, where are you going? I never said you were a slut—I just said you slept around—”
A pillow whacked him in the face. Cole wasn’t sure how Sunshine had managed that. “Very mature.”
Sunshine didn’t answer. A second later she left the room. Cole ran a hand through his hair and swore. He was just about to pursue her when the door opened again and she came back in.
“I’m not sleeping on a stupid couch, and I don’t want to talk any more, you hear?”
“But—”
“One more word and you can go sleep downstairs.”
He didn’t want to do that and they obviously weren’t going to work this out tonight. Cole gave in. It was all this moving around, he told himself as he flopped back down on the mattress. Sunshine climbed back in the bed beside him. As soon as Christmas was over he was going to find them a house if it was the last thing he did. Twenty minutes later, Sunshine’s even breathing told him she’d fallen asleep.
He wished he could find that oblivion.
The morning found them packing their bags again to move to Cab and Rose Johnson’s house. They did so in silence, broken only by the shortest questions and answers. Sunshine was beginning to feel like they’d gotten stuck on some kind of ride they couldn’t get off. Their tempers were worn thin; no wonder they couldn’t have a conversation without getting into an argument.
Cole drove her back to the Cruz ranch and left her on the front porch of the small cabin Cab and Rose inhabited. “I’m meeting Cab in town at the Sheriff’s station,” Cole said. “See you tonight.”
Sunshine knocked on the door and watched him drive away. Part of her knew she was being overly sensitive. Last night she’d interpreted everything Cole had said in the worst possible way. Still, he had said it, and it wasn’t fair. She’d only had a few serious relationships before she met him. She certainly hadn’t slept around.
She liked the looks of Cab and Rose’s homey cottage after the huge log cabin Evan and Bella inhabited, though. Evan and Bella had decorated their place beautifully and their guest bedroom had been to die for, but she relaxed when Rose showed her the small bedroom they would occupy for the night.
“I’m sorry it isn’t fancier,” she said. “We’re getting ready to build a home soon, but it won’t be done for another year at least.”
“I’d be sorry if it was.” Sunshine had had enough of fancy. She wanted to get home. Good thing the ranch house was beginning to shape up, even as her relationship with Cole was crashing to the ground. Sunshine wondered if she would end up living there alone. She couldn’t think of a worse fate.