“Our town can have that effect on people. You know, you could always stay longer than you intended to at first. You are most certainly welcome.”
Lyla sighed and looked away. “I don’t know, I really don’t think Keith would like that very much. Besides, what’s the point, if I’m going back anyway? I might as well get it over with.”
James clenched his teeth together to keep from speaking. Merrick’s words filled his mind. Should he do it now? Should he propose to Lyla?
Surely, she would just say no. She hadn’t really done anything to make him think she cared for him in any way besides a friendly manner.
James turned towards the barn and Lyla followed him. “Do you need help with the chores? I could help with something; I hate to just be a burden here.”
“I don’t know. Do you know how to milk a cow?” James asked.
Lyla twisted her mouth into an uncertain gesture, which James took to mean she did not.
“You could teach me, though. I’m told I’m a quick study.”
James nodded. “I’m sure you can learn quick enough. Come on. It’ll be fun either way,” he said with a chuckle.
The two walked side by side until they got to the barn. James took Lyla over to a stack of buckets where he pulled out four pails, handing two to Lyla.
“I’d like to have more cattle one day, but for now, we only have the four milk cows.”
Lyla looked confused. “Why would you want more? Don’t four milk cows take care of all the milk you all could drink?”
“You’re right. The cows produce much more than we need; we sell a majority of it in the market. And if we had more, we could sell more.”
Lyla nodded, swinging the pails at her side. James couldn’t help but chuckle. She looked so natural with the milk pails, as if this was something she was meant to do.
“So, where do I start?” Lyla was looking up and down at the four stalls.
“Here, why don’t you milk Molly? She’s by far the most cooperative.”
Lyla nodded and hurried over to the stall James was pointing to. James watched her examine the cow with a slightly frightened expression.
Molly was the gentlest cow on the ranch and James was doubtful she’d ever hurt a fly. If Lyla couldn’t handle milking Molly, he was uncertain she would be able to do any milking at all.
Lyla accepted the small milking stool and scooted in beside Molly, an uncomfortable, cringy expression on her face.
When Lyla grabbed Molly and squeezed, nothing came out, and James found himself stifling his laughter. He hurried over and knelt down beside Lyla.
Then, he wrapped his hands around hers. “Here, let me help you.” He showed her how to move her fingers to get an even flow of milk to ping into the bucket. “You squeeze at the top, first, and then hold it while you squeeze to the bottom.”
After a moment, Lyla pulled back and James stood to give her room.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” James said with one last grin before heading to milk the rest of the cows.
He had a feeling that, in the time it took him to do the rest of the animals, she would have barely covered the bottom of the bucket, but that was alright. It was nice to see her trying.
Chapter 21
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t much help,” Lyla said softly as they were washing out the milk pails. In the end, James had been right.
She hadn’t been able to fill the bucket, but he didn’t mind. Having someone around while he did his chores was nice.
Usually, Joey would help him, but this morning, the boy seemed busy with Bonnie in the kitchen. James could see how making sweet cakes was a more attractive option than milking cows.
Besides, it was nice having some time with Lyla, as strange as that was.
He was still trying to understand her, to get to know exactly what it was that was driving her.
If he could figure that out, he would have a higher chance of convincing her to either stay or to leave Joey.
A streak of guilt ran through him. He couldn’t think of things in the same unbiased way as he had before. He couldn’t ignore the sympathy he had developed for Lyla.
The thought of her going back to the city to marry a man she couldn’t stand and live a life of loneliness and regret made his heart wrench.
“Have you considered not going back to Merrill?”James asked suddenly. “You could stay here.”
“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I go back home?”
“I don’t know. I mean, what if you like it out here better?” James watched Lyla intently.
“I don’t think I could just abandon everything in Merrill and stay out here. I mean, I don’t know.” Lyla shook her head, as if it were too overwhelming to think about.
“We should hurry with this. It’s going to be lunch time soon,” James suggested, changing the subject.
He could tell that Lyla was uncomfortable, and that made him want to talk about something else.
James hated how his feelings had changed. Becoming attached to Lyla had made everything much more complicated.
---*---
As they walked through the cabin door, Joey came running over to them. He grabbed Lyla’s hand and danced around her, a smile on his face.
“I made oat cakes! I made one all by myself, especially for you. Do you want to try it?” Joey exclaimed with a pleased laugh.
Lyla nodded, but the look on her face was one that James could hardly decipher. Why did she look so…confused and sad whenever Joey talked to her?
Joey practically dragged Lyla into the kitchen, reached up onto the counter, and handed her an oddly shaped oat cake.
Lyla took a bite and smiled. “It’s delicious!” she said, continuing to eat it.
“So, you’ll stay?” Joey asked, his grin growing.
Lyla stopped chewing mid-bite and stared down at him. “What do you mean?”
“I thought…” Suddenly, Joey looked dejected. “I heard you talking the other day that you were going to be leaving. I thought maybe if I showed you how helpful I could be and how good I could cook then you might stay.” Joey’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to go live in the city, and I don’t want you to go, either.”
Lyla took a step back. “Joey, you don’t have to worry, okay? Whatever happens, I’m going to make sure you are where you’re happiest.”
When she turned, James could see her eyes were filled with tears. “I think I forgot something in the barn,” she said softly.
She brushed past James and out the door before he could get a word out of his mouth.
“I’m going to make sure she’s okay,” James said before hurrying out after her. He didn’t believe for a second that she had forgotten something.
When he entered the barn, it wasn’t hard to find Lyla. He heard her soft crying as soon as he stepped foot inside.
He walked to the back of the barn, where there was an empty stall. Lyla was sitting on a milk stool, her head in her hands, crying.
James grabbed another stool from the hallway and then went into the stall, where he sat opposite her.
He sat for a moment and then reached out, taking her hands in his. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
She paused for a moment, looking up at him. Her expression was troubled and her eyes red from her tears. When she saw his face, that seemed to make it worse, and she dipped her head back to her hands and continued to sob.
“Hey, it’s okay. What is it about Joey that bothers you so much?” James recognized the look he had seen on her face. And he was fairly certain it wasn’t just what Joey had said.
He had seen that look on her face various time since she had arrived. There was something about Joey and the relationship with her sister that he still wasn’t understanding.
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone,” Lyla sobbed into her hands.
James moved closer and pried her hands from her face, holding them in his own. “Lyla, I don’t know what it is that has you so upset or
what it is you think you have to keep a secret, but you can trust me.”
Lyla continued crying but slowly, her sobs slowed until she picked her face up just a little and wiped her eyes.
“Look, I know you don’t know me that well, and I might seem like some unfeeling sheriff who wants to keep Joey from you, but I want to be your friend.” The other words that he wanted to say stayed trapped in his mouth.
For some reason, it didn’t seem the right time to tell her he felt more than friendship for her.
He wanted to tell her, but what if she rejected him? They had only known each other for a couple of weeks. Still, she had been friendly towards him, and he had almost thought that she had occasionally looked like she might want to stay, or want more from their relationship.
But he didn’t know how much of that had been real and how much was just in his imagination.
“There’s a lot about my past that you don’t know,” Lyla said at last, pulling James’ attention back to her.
“I think everyone could say that about themselves. You don’t have to tell me every detail about your past, but try to help me understand. Why don’t you want to care for your only sister’s child? Why do you want to go back to a town where you have no family and live in a loveless marriage? Why would you want to do that to yourself?”
“Things aren’t as simple as they seem. My sister and I… we had a complicated relationship. If you knew everything about me, you wouldn’t want to be friends. You wouldn’t even want me on your ranch, or around Joey.”
James shook his head; he was fairly certain there was nothing that Lyla could have done that would be bad enough for him not to want her on his ranch. “You can’t say that without telling me. You don’t really know me, or how I would react to whatever your big secret is.”
Lyla sighed, then stood up. She began to pace back and forth in the small stall. “Fine, if you want me to answer one of those questions, I will. The reason I want to stay in a loveless marriage is because love doesn’t work around me.”
James sighed. What in the world could she mean by that? “Why would you say that?”
“I have lost every single person I ever cared about, one person after another. When I thought it would stop, that at least my sister was safe and happy with her family somewhere in the west, it got worse. She died, too.”
James stood and leaned up against the side of the stall. “That doesn’t mean that love doesn’t work around you. That just means that you’ve had one very bad streak of luck. Or maybe not luck… but bad stuff happens in this world to everyone. People die. People get sick. People get hurt. People do bad things. But it’s not because of who you are.”
“I learned a long time ago that there’s no such thing as luck,” she replied. “There are people that are meant to be happy and have everything they could ever need or want, and then there’s others, like me. People who are destined to have everything possible go wrong for their entire lives.”
“Lyla, that can’t possibly be true. You are beautiful, smart, and perfectly capable of deciding what kind of life you want. Look, you’ve spent time here on this ranch with us and I know for a fact, we all care about you. Nothing has happened to us.”
“Yet—nothing has happened to you yet. How do you know that by me staying here, something won’t happen to Bonnie? Or God forbid, Joey?”
“I don’t know that. Nobody knows what is going to happen, when or why. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop living and push everyone away from us.”
“Maybe that’s the only way to keep people we care about safe!”
James took a step back in surprise. He had thought that Lyla was making up excuses for herself because of her desire to leave, but it seemed as if she really believed this superstition. How could he convince her that this was all an illusion of her mind?
He was filled with sympathy for the young woman who thought she was the bearer of misfortune. He cringed as he realized that, at one time, he had thought something similar.
“What about the second question, Lyla—what is your problem with Joey? Wouldn’t you want to hold on to the last piece of your sister?” James figured if he was stumped in one area, he would try another.
A fearful expression came over Lyla’s face, followed by a look of defeat. “You want to know the truth? He’s not my sister’s child. He’s not her husband’s child. He’s mine; he’s my son. And I gave him away.”
Lyla’s words hit James like a ton of bricks. What was she talking about?
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Lyla scoffed. “When I was seventeen, a young man tricked me. He filled my pretty, innocent head with lies of love and marriage and wanting to be with me forever. I was naïve and didn’t want to lose him, so I gave him my heart. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted everything before we were married.” Tears began to run down Lyla’s cheeks once more. “He disappeared the next morning, but he left something behind. I found out three months later.”
Suddenly, everything started fitting into place. The way that Lyla seemed to want to be close to Joey and also avoid him at the same time.
She sniffed and wiped her face, then continued, “My father was the pastor of the church. If he would have found out, he would have been devastated. What I did was unforgiveable.”
There were still things that James didn’t understand like, why didn’t Lyla want to raise Joey, then, if she was really his mother? How had her sister ended up with the child, and why had she moved so far away with him? He sat in stunned silence, trying to sort out the questions that poured through his mind like water.
“See? I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t see me the same way. That’s why I’ve never told anyone before, but maybe I should start. It’s not like anyone thinks any better of me, with or without my past being out in the open.”
“That’s not true, Lyla. It’s just…surprising.” James still felt as if his head was spinning, like he couldn’t quite process the news. The resemblance was there, but he had figured that was because the boy was her nephew.
James blinked rapidly a few times. How crazy was this whole situation? Joey’s aunt was actually his mother?
“Why? Why did your sister move west, and why don’t you want him?”
Lyla gave a bitter laugh. “You think I don’t want him? I never didn’t want him, but I didn’t want to disappoint him. I am a failure.”
“No, you’re not,” James reached out toward Lyla, but she shrank from his touch.
“What do you think people would have said if they had seen a seventeen-year-old girl with a baby and without a husband?”
James nodded in understanding. “Nothing good.”
“Yeah, nothing good. So, I came up with a plan so that everyone could be happy—well, most everyone, anyways.” Lyla sat down on the milk bench and resumed her previous position, looking completely defeated, while James waited for her to continue her story.
Chapter 22
Lyla paced back and forth in her sister’s living room, her hand over her growing stomach. She had known for nearly three months now, and she was beginning to get quite fat.
It still hadn’t become obvious while she had been at home with her parents—they just thought that she was eating too much.
A Treasure Brought by Fate: A Historical Western Romance Book Page 16
