Free Willow in Bloom by Victoria Pade Page B

palms. To bring her closer. Close enough to get a better idea of how sweet she smelled. Close enough to kiss her good-night…
    And what had he been doing, even considering kissing her good-night? he demanded of himself. If he was on the lookout for another woman he sure as hell shouldn’t have been thinking about kissing Willow.
    But that’s what he’d been doing.
    Thinking about it.
    Wanting to do it…
    Maybe that fall from the horse had knocked more screws loose than anyone had realized.
    He wished his brother were there to talk it out with him. But not only was Brick not there, Tyler hadn’t been able to get hold of him since he’d started trying early this morning.
    But he knew even without talking to his brother that Brick would be glad to hear he was attracted to someone else. To someone in the here and now. Someone who was more than a memory he couldn’t grasp.
    Tyler knew his brother thought that trying to find his mystery woman was foolhardy. And he also knew that Brick was worried about the pull Tyler felt to someone he’d spent only one night with. Someone who hadn’t left him so much as a phone number or an address where he could reach her again.
    But Brick didn’t understand the attraction Tyler felt. The pull he couldn’t explain.
    The draw, the pull that should have been keeping him from wanting to kiss Willow Colton and wasn’t.
    So what was he doing? Tyler asked himself. Juggling women? Because that wasn’t something he’d ever done.
    He knew guys—particularly guys on the rodeo circuit—who did that. Who never turned down a willing woman in any town they were in at any given time.
    But that wasn’t Tyler. Or Brick, for that matter. It was too complicated. Too dangerous. Too sleazy.
    Yet here Tyler was, intent on finding one woman,but spending time with an entirely different woman. Wasn’t that sleazy?
    But what was the alternative?
    Either give up the quest for the mystery woman or give up seeing Willow.
    Tyler shook his head. He couldn’t give up his quest for the mystery woman. He had too many hopes that finding her would mean getting back his memory, too.
    But he also couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing Willow.
    Which put him right back where he’d started: was he being fair to her?
    He thought seriously about that. Very seriously, because he wanted to do right by her.
    But the more he considered exactly what he was doing with Willow, the more he decided it wasn’t altogether unfair to her. It wasn’t as if they’d embarked on a grand romance or a serious involvement. They were just getting to know each other. And there was nothing fair or unfair about that. It wasn’t as if he’d asked her for a commitment of some kind. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t be seeing other guys. And he wasn’t seeing other women.
    He was just looking for one.
    Okay, no matter what kind of spin he put on it, it wasn’t a really stellar thing to be doing.
    But he had to do it.
    Because at this point, he couldn’t make himself give up either seeing Willow or keeping an eye out for the mystery woman.
    But maybe what he could do, he decided, was be careful. And considerate of Willow’s feelings.
    He could work damn hard to make sure that things between them didn’t go too far, while he tried to figure out who the mystery woman was.
    But until he did, maybe he could just go with the flow.
    He knew that would be what Brick would say. Brick would tell him to enjoy Willow, and if, in the process, he found the mystery woman, then just deal with that development when it happened.
    If it happened.
    And if it didn’t happen?
    Then maybe he wasn’t meant to find the mystery woman again.
    Coming to that conclusion on his own surprised Tyler, because it was the first time he’d seriously thought he might be okay with the possibility.
    Which Brick would consider a step forward.
    And maybe that