“I’ve said my goodbye.” Not much to say in this one-sided conversation.
“I’m glad you stayed for the service. John wanted all his kids here.”
She pressed her lips together. “I’m not so sure about that. They don’t know about me.”
“They’ll meet you at the reading of the will.”
“I’m sorry, what?” After the funeral she planned to go back to her hotel for another night of movies and too much quiet before her morning flight.
“We’ll meet with Noah and Annabelle at the ranch to go over the will.”
“Surely I don’t need to stay for that.”
Tom’s eyes strayed back to her chest. She had the urge to bend her knees and shrink down until his eye line was back on her face. Wasted effort. She knew men like Tom. Their eyes glassed over and the little boy inside them jumped up and down screaming, “Boobies!” She also knew it was only a matter of time before he got all grabby hands and forgot his good sense.
Men.
“We’ll do the deed after the barbecue up at the ranch tonight at eight.”
Was that a double entendre? Do the deed. She resisted rolling her eyes. That’s what you think.
He closed the distance between them, standing too close, and reached up and cupped her shoulder in his hand. “I was surprised to learn about you.”
She took a step back, making his hand fall away, and met his lust-filled gaze with a cold stare of her own. “John’s and my relationship is . . . was complicated.” She feared John had told this letch all about her and Candy.
Voices rose in the back of the church and the doors began to open, saving her from having to answer any awkward questions Tom’s statement alluded to.
“You need to be there.” Tom stared her down, then turned to the back of the church.
“Fine.” With a last look at John, she turned just as the priest stepped in, Noah and Annabelle behind him. Roxy resisted the urge to turn and stare at the pair. As mixed-up as her emotions were over John’s death, they were even more convoluted when it came to John’s children.
The children he raised, loved, and kept with him when he’d abandoned her.
Chapter Six
Noah followed the Father into the church and spotted Tom and, if he wasn’t mistaken, the same dark-haired woman he’d seen at the hospital two nights ago. Without looking their way, she rushed away and disappeared through the side door.
“Who was that?” Annabelle asked.
“I’m not sure,” Father Patrick responded. “Tom asked me to allow her in before anyone else arrived.”
Noah walked ahead and met Tom near the dozens of bouquets of flowers outlining the coffin and spread out around the raised stage. As if a flower garden exploded in the church, their rich scent filled the room.
“Who is she?” he demanded.
Tom cocked one eyebrow at Noah’s tone. “There isn’t time to explain now. It’s complicated. Like everybody, John had a few secrets.”
Noah wanted to knock the smug look that went along with that cryptic statement right off Tom’s face.
Secrets. He hated them as much as surprises.
Annabelle pulled on his hand and dragged him away from Tom toward John’s open casket. Austin and Tom walked back down the aisle.
Annabelle nudged his arm. “Maybe she was Dad’s girlfriend.”
For some reason, Noah didn’t like the idea. “I didn’t get a good look at her, but I think she was too young to be his girlfriend.”
“My mother is twenty years younger than Dad.”
“That woman had to be in her early twenties, Sprite. Not much older than you.”
“Oh.” Annabelle scrunched her lips. “Have you noticed how secretive Tom seems the last several days? Ever since Dad went into the hospital, he’s been acting strange.” Annabelle might be young, but she didn’t miss much.
Noah didn’t like Tom’s smug attitude. He’d get his answers soon. “Forget Tom. This day is hard enough without him creating more drama.”
“My mother brings enough into our lives. Why do things have to be so complicated?” Annabelle’s gaze fixed on John, her thoughts in the past.
“Relationships are complicated, Sprite.”
“Why can’t we have had a mother and a father who loved us? A real family?”
Noah wished a thousand times that his mother hadn’t died and he’d lived with her and John on the ranch, one big, happy family. But then, he wouldn’t have Annabelle. “I wanted that, too. But you can have it, Sprite. You’re just going to have to make it for your kids when you’re older. Much, much older,” he teased, and bumped his elbow into her shoulder.
“You’re old,” she teased back. “Why don’t you have a wife and kids, yet?” Annabelle smiled up at him. “I think it’d be cool to be an aunt.”
“Enjoy thinking about it, because it ain’t going to happen anytime soon.”
“You never know,” she teased.
Annabelle’s gaze settled on John’s casket. Noah wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her the last two steps up to John’s open coffin.
“He looks nice in his suit, but he probably would have been more comfortable in his jeans and cowboy shirt.” Annabelle burst into tears.
“Ah, honey, don’t do that again.” Noah handed her his handkerchief and awkwardly patted her on the back. Giving in to his emotions, his eyes filled with tears. John’s death had hit him hard at the hospital, but seeing Annabelle break down and the sight of John in the coffin was too much. He choked back the tears and wrapped Annabelle in his arms. Her head pressed to his chest, her fists clutched the back of his suit jacket, and he laid his cheek on top of her head and held her close.
People filed in and he sucked in a deep breath and led Annabelle to their seats in the first pew.
Austin stood and wrapped him in a bear hug after Annabelle took her seat. His friend gave him a hard squeeze, slapped him on the back, and sat next to Annabelle. Noah sat on her other side and barely remembered any of the specifics as one after another of John’s friends stood and gave eulogies. Noah let the kind words, jokes, crazy stories, and gentle rebukes about John’s stern countenance fill him up, until he thought he’d burst with missing the only father he’d ever known.
After the priest gave the last blessing, Noah, Austin, Robby, their ranch foreman, and three of John’s closest friends served as pallbearers, taking John out to the waiting hearse.
From there, everything went by in a blur, from the drive to the cemetery and the graveside ceremony that ended with him and Annabelle watching the casket lower into the grave and both of them tossing a white rose and a handful of dirt onto the casket.
Through it all, he couldn’t seem to shake one thought. Although John had friends and him and Annabelle, where was the loving wife, the life partner, the best friend who stood by him through thick and thin?
For the first time, Noah truly wanted a wife and children. He didn’t want to find himself at the end of his life, sitting atop that hill overlooking the ranch and not have the woman he loved beside him.
Annabelle squeezed his hand. “Noah, everyone left for the ranch. Whenever you’re ready, we should go, too.”
He shook free of his thoughts. “You ready?”
She hesitated. “Not really. Everything is going to change tomorrow.”
“Everything John left behind will still be there.”
“It won’t be the same,” she said with a petulant tone.
He gave in to her childish outburst and conceded, “It won’t be the same.” It seemed to make her feel better.
She sighed and plucked a white rose from one of the many bouquets spread out before them. She brought the bloom to her nose.
How utterly feminine a gesture.
Why did John have to leave him now when Annabelle appeared to be blooming before his eyes?
Next thing he knew, she’d want to start dating. With her long blond hair, blue eyes, and slim, but rounding five-foot-four figure, she was
very pretty. In another couple years, she’d be a knockout, and he’d be knee-deep in sex-crazed teenage boys.
“Let’s go, Sprite. People are waiting on us.”
She walked with him to the car, her arm tucked through his. He settled her inside and turned back to the quiet cemetery and the freshly dug grave.
“Rest in peace, John.”
He slid in beside Annabelle. She leaned her head on his shoulder. The limo turned right toward the cemetery entrance and he stared out the window, back at John’s grave.
Annabelle must have been doing the same, because she blurted out, “There she is again.”
Noah saw her. No one would miss the beautiful woman walking past the headstones straight for John’s grave.
The woman swiped at her cheek and wiped away tears. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he felt it. She stood beside John’s grave, crying, her shoulders slumped, head bowed. Her grief weighed her down. He read it in her, because he felt it in himself.
“Let’s stop and see who she is,” Annabelle suggested.
“Whatever her reasons, she’s made a point to only see him when they’re alone. I’ll ask Tom about her again at the barbecue.”
He’d let her grieve in her way and have this time with John, but if it was the last thing he did, he’d discover the identity of John’s mystery woman.
Chapter Seven
Friends, neighbors, ranch hands crowded the stone patio. Cheryl and Lisa topped his list of people he wished had stayed away. Cheryl clung to him. Lisa acted like she owned the place. Tom made Noah’s list of people he’d like to throw out. The arrogant, sneaky lawyer evaded his questions with cryptic statements about the mystery woman and surprises in John’s will.
Noah wanted to find Tom’s father and demand he come out of retirement and work for them again so he didn’t have to deal with Tom anymore.
He downed the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle into the recycle bin. He wanted to go down to the stables, saddle a horse, and ride out for a few hours. Maybe up to the overlook.
Mary stepped up beside him.
Before he gave in to that desire, he needed to focus on unfinished business. “It’s almost time for the reading of the will. Mind coaxing the few lingering guests to go home?”
“You might have some trouble getting rid of Cheryl.” Mary gave him a toothy smile. “She’s barely left your side. Will we have company for breakfast?” Mary’s bland tone conveyed how little she wanted to add another place at the table.
Noah felt like squirming under her stern gaze, but stood firm. He’d never brought a woman home to the ranch. He wasn’t about to start now with an ex. “We aren’t together anymore.”
Mary jabbed him in the gut with the back of her hand. “Have you told her that?”
“Several times.” He didn’t know how to make it any clearer. “She doesn’t hear me.”
“She’s a woman who wants something.”
“It isn’t me.” That wife and family seemed even further out of reach.
“You were always such a smart boy.” She patted his cheek and moved away, walking through the dwindling crowd to hint that people should go home and give the family their privacy.
Noah grabbed a cold beer, slipped away, and headed for John’s study, unable to accept another sad condolence.
Raw inside, he sank into the corner of the sofa, unable to bring himself to take John’s seat behind the desk. Thoughts of John and what was to come swamped his mind. He twisted off the top on his beer, tossed the cap on the coffee table, took a swig from the bottle, leaned his head back against the couch, and rubbed his thumb and index finger over his brow, trying to ease the aching throb building behind his eyes.
Despite his words to Annabelle to the contrary, he sat in the quiet room, John’s ghost everywhere, and waited for the reading of the will and the inevitable changes in his life.
He cringed when Annabelle walked in followed by Lisa, Cheryl, and Tom, interrupting his momentary solitude. He didn’t need this. Not now, when his emotions were raw.
“Sulking and drinking alone.” Lisa tsk-tsked him with a shake of one pink painted fingertip.
He downed the last of his beer and seriously considered pouring himself a double whiskey at the bar by the bookcases where Tom helped himself to a splash of bourbon over ice.
Noah refrained. “I wanted some peace and quiet after that crowd we had here today.”
“John had a lot of good friends.” Cheryl settled on the couch next to him, her thigh pressed to his. She patted his knee. The buzz he felt wasn’t from having a woman next to him, cozying up to his neglected body, but from the four beers he’d consumed, one after the other. Scrunched into the corner of the sofa, he had no room to move away.
Some mindless sex would take the edge off, but his inner voice warned him to beware. He’d hate himself in the morning for using her when she clearly hoped they’d get back together.
Nope. Not going there.
“Cheryl, thank you for coming today, but I think it’s time you went home.” And gave him his space.
“Oh, come on, Noah. Let her stay,” Lisa coaxed. “Everyone knows John left everything to you and Annabelle. There are no big secrets here.”
John died. Didn’t that matter?
Yes, Noah and Annabelle would carry on the ranch, but they’d both give it all up to have John back.
Didn’t anyone else feel the same?
“You’re lucky I let you in this house. Being Annabelle’s mother doesn’t give you the right to decide who stays and who goes.”
“Noah, honey.” Cheryl’s palm rubbed up and down his thigh, making him uncomfortable, and not in a good way. “You shouldn’t go through this alone.”
He stopped her hand by placing his over hers, removing it, and putting it on her own lap. “Thank you for your concern, but—”
Cheryl surprised him by leaning in and planting her mouth softly over his in a coaxing kiss that was warm and tempting. For a second, he gave in to the memories, the moment, and let go of the anger, frustration, and grief he’d been carrying all day.
But reason and reality returned when he realized she was taking advantage.
He came to his senses and pulled away.
He took her forearms and pulled her hands from his shoulders. “This is not happening. It’s time for you to leave.”
Embarrassment mixed with anger filled her eyes and pinked her cheeks. She stood, gave Lisa a long look, then left the room, slamming the door behind her.
Lisa gave him that disapproving look she walked in with again. “She just wants to help.”
“Annabelle and I want to do this alone.”
“If you think I’m leaving, you’re nuts.” Lisa planted herself in a chair beside the other sofa where Annabelle sat with her hands on her knees, head down between her shoulders.
“Tom, perhaps we can start with custody of Annabelle,” Noah suggested, trying to move this along.
“She’s coming home with me,” Lisa said matter-of-factly.
Annabelle’s head shot up and the color drained from her face.
Noah leaned forward and pointed at Lisa. “The hell she is. She belongs with me, here on the ranch.”
“I’m her mother.”
“This is her home. The place you left her without a second thought when she was three.”
“Stop.” Tom held up his hands. “John already decided what happens next.”
“Then read the will and tell her she’s not taking Annabelle from this ranch.”
All he wanted to do was kick Lisa and Tom out and have a moment with Annabelle to find a way to let go of the grief and get on with their lives.
Tom gave Noah another of those cryptic looks, then blew his mind. “I’ll read the will as soon as John’s daughter arrives.”
Chapter Eight
Roxy followed the curve of the road in her rental car to a long straightaway that revealed her father’s home. Glorious, the expanse of green pastures, old shade trees,
and well-maintained barns, outbuildings, and a large covered training ring spread out before her. Even in the fading light, the house was magnificent. Gray stone walls and gleaming glass windows enclosed the first floor. The windows and doors trimmed in a bright white against the shades of gray. The second floor was cedar shingles, silvered from time and weather, with the same white trim on the windows, decks, and railings. Well-maintained gardens flowered in white, pink, red, and purple. The bushes bloomed in profusion. She loved the many shades of greens with the bright colors. The landscaping drew her in and gave her a sense of peace. Being here, on the ranch her father loved, amidst the bountiful gardens and grasses, brought to mind how much she disliked the hot, arid, sparse desert.
She tamped down thoughts that this could have been her life.
So many horses. They gathered together in some of the pastures. Others stood sentry at the fence rails, or grazed on the lush wildflower-dappled grass in the fields. The ranch and her father were well-known for the quarter horses and Appaloosas. Beautiful sorrels, gorgeous palominos, and dozens of spotted Appaloosas as far as the eye could see.
Her anger might have gotten the better of her most of the time, but in her quiet moments, usually atop a horse from this ranch, she reminded herself that he may have never sent her a birthday or Christmas present wrapped in pretty paper, but he’d given her something infinitely more valuable and necessary in her life. Why couldn’t she see that when she was a teenager, sucked up her pride, set aside her anger, and come here and demanded he acknowledge her in some other way than with a check and a horse?
She put everything she had into caring for and loving them and it had made a difference in her life. Without them, who’s to say she wouldn’t have ended up just like her mother?
A woman in an Accord peeled out of her father’s driveway and sped past her. When she pulled in, only a few cars sat parked near the four-car garage. She wondered who they belonged to, and hoped she could avoid a scene in front of the family’s company.
Dirty Little Secret Page 4
