"I know." Her plan to delay telling him until she had mastered reading had at its core an unforgivable flaw—a deliberate lie.
Grandmom patted her hand. "I guess it all comes down to whether you trust him."
Brenna stared at Cole's grandmother. She hadn't thought of it in so stark a light. If she had been asked whether she trusted Cole, she would have said yes without hesitation. And yet, in this … did she trust him?
"Okay, where is everybody?" came Cole's baritone voice from the living room.
"Up here," Grandmom called back.
His footsteps thundered up the stairs, giving Brenna scant time to pull herself together. He appeared in the doorway. When Brenna caught his eye, he winked. She returned his smile, comparing this carefree, boyish side of his personality to the stern man she had first met. Both aspects of the man drew her.
Did she trust him to understand her illiteracy? More importantly, would he forgive her deceptions? Brenna wished the answer was either a simple yes or no. Nothing else in her attraction to Cole was simple, and this was no exception.
"Do you still need to go to the grocery store, Grandmom?" he asked.
"If you want that watermelon."
His smile broadened to a grin, "Oh, I thought I'd go steal that from McCracken's farm."
"And come back home with buckshot in your—"
"I'm sure you have me confused with someone else," he interrupted.
"I'm sure not," she retorted. "Though it was a relief when you decided to give up a life of crime in favor of the law."
Cole planted his hands on his hips. "Actually, I planned to graduate from stealing watermelons to robbing banks."
"In some circles, that might be a more highly rated career choice than being a lawyer," Brenna teased.
"You…" He pointed a finger at her. "You've obviously been spending too much time with my grandmother. We're going to have to do something about that."
She nodded. "Bringing her back to Denver might be good."
Grandmom chuckled. "Just what a young man needs in his bachelor pad. A meddling old woman."
"You're not old. I might even be able to fix you up with a date," Cole assured her.
"As though I need your help," she said tartly.
Cole laughed. "Give me ten minutes to shower. You're coming to the store with us, right, Brenna?"
She grinned. "Of course. After all that nonsense you told us at lunch about picking out the perfect watermelon, I wouldn't miss it."
A few minutes later Brenna piled into the pickup with Cole and Grandmom. Brenna's bare legs brushed next to Cole's denim-clad ones, and it was impossible for her not to remember her reaction to taking off his jeans hours earlier. Cole held her hand between changing gears and pointing out things he considered interesting.
"The real purpose of this outing," Cole announced in a tour-guide voice after they pulled onto the highway, "is to show our eminent world traveler, Miss Brenna James, the famous landmark Chimney Rock." He stopped talking, and after an instant of silence made a rolling motion with his free hand. Brenna and Grandmom looked at one another and, smiling, shrugged almost in unison. "You're supposed to ask me why it's a famous landmark," he prompted.
"Ah," was Grandmom's response.
Brenna grinned. "Okay, Mr. Tour Guide, I'll bite. Why is it famous?"
"I'm glad you asked that," Cole said. He pointed through the windshield where the tall outline of Chimney Rock jutted into the sky. "Every time I see it, I wonder what it must have been like, following a wagon train on the Oregon Trail, and waiting for this landmark to appear on the horizon."
"It's famous because you wonder about it?" Brenna teased.
Cole squeezed her knee, his hand lingering an all-too-brief moment on her thigh. "It's famous because it's the first significant landmark for the wagon trains after they left Independence."
"I think I knew that."
"She thinks she knew that," Cole echoed. He turned off the highway, then parked the pickup in front of one of the numerous markers found along the Oregon Trail route. "What a tour guide doesn't need is harassment." He cut the engine and stretched his arm along the seat back and pulled Brenna closer to him. "I suppose you're going to tell me that you've seen point-of-interest signs all over the world."
"As a matter of fact, I have," she agreed, as her mind urged her, taunted her. Tell him. I dare you. Tell him that you couldn't read this sign if your life depended upon it.
She looked at the sign, then at Grandmom, half expecting her to announce to Cole that she—Brenna—couldn't read.
"Some tour guide, refusing to read these signs for the poor foreign tourists who look at the words and see gibberish," Brenna said, her lips curved in a smile she didn't feel, easy casualness filling her voice. She glanced at him again. "The last time I was on vacation with my parents was in Europe. I remember very clearly that tour guides were responsible for all points of interest, not the tourists."
Cole grinned and gave Brenna a casual swipe over the top of her head. "You're asking for trouble, ma'am."
She poked him in the side with her elbow. "I wouldn't want to put you out of work, Mr. Tour Guide, sir."
He dropped a kiss on her cheek and put the truck back into gear. "This tour guide says, 'Onward, ho!' And, besides, I hated these things when I was a kid. I'm never going to make my kids suffer the way my parents made me suffer."
Grandmom snorted. Cole burst into laughter, and Brenna joined in, shaking with relief.
Brenna was positive Cole would feel her trembling as he pulled the truck back onto the highway. She clasped her hands together and forced herself to participate in the easy banter between him and his grandmother.
She was the worst kind of coward, and she hated being one. Did she trust him? Not to pity her. Not to lose interest in her. Not to think she was stupid. Obviously not, or she would have told him by now.
She avoided Grandmom's gaze, dreading the censure she suspected she would see there, knowing she deserved it.
"Brenna, is there anything special you'd like for our Fourth of July feast?" Grandmom asked.
Brenna faced Cole's grandmother and found exactly what her voice reflected. Concern. Friendship.
"No," Brenna said, then cleared the huskiness from her voice. "Thank you." Disdain, censure, hostility. Those would have been easier to bear.
At the grocery store, Brenna found herself participating in his nonsensical method of determining which watermelons were the ripest, the sweetest. She even found herself agreeing that the best kind of watermelons were those stolen from some poor farmer's patch. Through it all, she wondered if, like Alice, she had fallen down a rabbit-hole to some strange, wonderful place. This man who played silly games with his grandmother could not be the same harsh lawyer she remembered from her first meeting with him.
"What's left on the list?" Cole asked Grandmom, pushing the cart down the aisle, putting things not on the list into the basket. Peanuts. Pretzels. Oreo cookies.
"Important things," she responded, eyeing his additions. "Flour. Milk."
"Milk," Cole said, drawing Brenna close. "You know I used to get up at four in the morning to milk the cow before I went to school. Now they bay it from the store. Can you believe it?"
"And you trudged through the snow to catch the bus, I bet."
He shook his head solemnly. "This was before buses. I walked miles."
Brenna laughed. "You're quite well preserved for such an old—"
"Watch it," he warned. "If you say mean things, I may not invite you to my campfire."
"What campfire is this?" she asked.
"One down next to the lake. We can't roast marshmallows without a fire." He winked, and Brenna imagined that marshmallows weren't the only thing he planned to roast.
Brenna noticed he added staples to the basket that weren't on the list. And besides getting things he liked for himself, he casually added the kind of tobacco his dad used in his pipe, a bag of chocolate candies like the ones in a dish on his mo
ther's desk, a bottle of peach-flavored seltzer Grandmom had mentioned she liked. At the checkout counter, he kept Grandmom so preoccupied that he had the groceries paid for before she was able to take the cash out of her wallet. This was a side of him Brenna hadn't imagined, a side she liked.
Since sunrise this morning, she had experienced the most fulfillment she had ever known, and she had seen the return of her oldest companion—fear of discovery.
All with people she'd like to know and love for the rest of her life, if that were her choice to make.
In her heart of hearts, she wished it was.
* * *
"There's something I have to tell you," Brenna said to Cole two days later, when they were about a hundred miles from Denver.
They each had been increasingly silent during the long drive. Each exit off the interstate represented a crossroads to her. At each one, her conscience mocked her deceit. She had to tell him and get it over with.
"My turn first," Cole said, clearing his throat. His glance left the highway for a moment as he met her gaze. "I haven't been honest or fair with you."
His statement echoed exactly what she had intended to say to him. His gaze left the highway again, and he took her hand. "You and me… We have something good going, don't you think?"
Brenna nodded and ran her tongue over lips that felt dry, chapped. She didn't dare speculate about where this was going.
Cole's attention returned to the long, straight expanse of highway that stretched in front of them. "I let you believe that I quit from Jones, Markham and Simmons." He cleared his throat. "It didn't happen quite like that. I was given a choice between resigning or being fired."
She didn't know what she had been expecting him to say. This wasn't it. Clearly, she remembered he had told her he left the firm shortly after her case was finished. "Because of me?"
"The situation with you and Harvey Bates was the final straw on a very large pile." Cole gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "One of the first things you learn after getting out of law school is how to build cases on what you want to present, how to control your own agenda, how to get a judge and jury to see what you want them to see. When you're part of a big firm, you learn how to use the system to acquire cases that are good for the firm. Financially. Prestige-wise."
"Harvey Bates was prestigious?" Brenna asked, confused.
"Hell, no. If a case has prestige, the partners handle it. But clients like Bates are the bread and butter of a firm. He spends several thousand dollars with the firm every year. That's what associates are for. To take the dregs the partners don't want to handle, or don't have time to handle."
"Harvey Bates."
Cole nodded. "Among others." He glanced back at her. "I've been thinking about this a lot. I told Zach MacKenzie the other day that I'd tolerate nothing less than the whole truth. And then I didn't have the guts to give you what I demanded of others." A wry smile lifted the corner of his mouth. "Not exactly a high point for me. That's the first thing."
"There's more?" The whole truth. The words echoed in her mind, and her heart sank.
"Have you ever been seriously involved with someone? To the point of thinking about marriage?"
Again, he completely surprised her. She hadn't anticipated the question, and she answered honestly, "Once. I was—"
Cole pressed a finger against her mouth. "I'm not asking you to tell me about it, fair lady." A brief smile slashed across his face. "Unless this guy is still around. In which case I'll be forced to challenge him to a duel at sunrise."
Brenna shook her head, smiling at the image he so easily painted in her head.
"Good. What's in the past for you is none of my business." His hand lifted again, and he caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "I was, too. Once. Serious, as in engaged."
Oh, God. She didn't want to know about his past. She didn't want to know they had gotten this serious. The skeletons rattling in his closet were benign in comparison to the monsters in hers. Through dry lips, she said, "The Susan person."
Cole chuckled. "I should have guessed Grandmom would have told you."
"How did you know?"
"That's how Grandmom always refers to her. They didn't get along."
"You don't have to tell me about her."
"I want to."
"I don't—"
"I want you to know, Brenna. This has been eating at me for days, and I want to get it behind me." He gave her a quick glance. "I met her just after I passed the bar. She was working for a Big Eight firm."
"Big Eight?"
"One of the largest CPA firms in the country. She's a CPA, very bright, very ambitious. We had lots of interests in common. Or so I thought at the time. We planned to have it all. Vacations in Aspen and Hawaii, Christmases in Acapulco. She accepted a position in Chicago, and I planned to go with her. We even rented a great apartment—a penthouse in an elegant old building that had been renovated."
Brenna schooled her expression into one of polite interest as his words ate away at her. His voice held the reminiscence of fond memories. Though the lifestyle Cole described wasn't one she had ever wanted, she hated the dreams he had built with someone else, hated knowing those dreams made her jealous.
"I had quit my job, put my house up for sale, and she had already moved."
"What happened?"
"I got an offer on my house—for the price I was asking. And I couldn't sign the papers. Susan told me I'd never stopped being a farm boy."
"I'm sorry," Brenna said.
"I'm not." Cole's big hands flexed over the top of the steering wheel before he let his fingers loosely curl around it again. "I was then, but I'm not anymore." He glanced at Brenna. "I resented the hell out of her accusations. I'm an attorney, and I like being one. But the ranch is just as much a part of who I am. You know?"
"I know," Brenna agreed softly. "But that's part of you, too, isn't it? Vacations in exotic locales and—"
"At the time, I wanted it."
"And now?" She was torturing herself for asking, but she had to know.
"I like working in a city. I discovered what made me happiest, though, was to live in the country. Penthouse apartments, hell, they're fine." He gave Brenna a quick look, a genuine wide smile filling his face. "I just couldn't figure out where to keep a Shop-Vac and a radial-arm saw in one."
"No place for your toys, huh?" she teased, the ache in her heart easing at his confession.
"Tools, fair lady, not toys." He clasped her hand within his again. "Now. Your turn. Michael told me your dad is coming for a visit. Is that what's bothering you?"
"Some." Tell him. This was a time for confessions. He had given her an opening. A big one. Her throat squeezed clued against the words that would drive him from her life.
Cole squeezed her hand. "You can come stay with me if you want."
"That's a tempting offer. Only, I promised myself I wouldn't run away—" Sudden realization choked her voice. She had promised herself she wouldn't run away from her father anymore. Yet she was running away from the inevitable with Cole.
"Hell of a thing, dads are sometimes," Cole said. "And there isn't anything wrong with running, sometimes. Listening to you and Zach MacKenzie made me realize how lucky I am. Zach's father told him he deserved what's happened to him."
"And Zach believes him?"
"Damned if I know. Probably. Zach checked himself into a treatment hospital last week."
Brenna heard a tinge of anger creep into Cole's voice. "That makes you mad?"
"The timing is lousy. The hell of it is that I admire what he's done. It takes guts to admit you've got a problem, then deal with it. In some ways he reminds me of you."
"Another person in an impossible mess, huh?" She let go of Cole's hand and wrapped both of hers around herself, chilled to the bone, knowing she had to give up the deceptions, unable to say the words aloud.
Cole shook his head. "A person who faces things head-on when the going gets tough. I'm not sure I'd have the courage
to choose the path he's taken."
"He's a nice guy," Brenna said. "I hope things work out for him." Tell him, you coward. Just tell him.
"He's done his part," Cole said. "All I have to do is mine. Which reminds me. Did the guy who owns Score talk to you about filing for unemployment?"
The balance of the drive into Denver focused increasingly on the matters at hand for the upcoming week. Brenna's search for a new job and filing for unemployment. Cole's schedule, which included a couple of court appearances. Moments before they arrived back at Michael and Jane's apartment, Cole offered again to have Brenna come stay with him while her father visited.
She wanted to accept. Doing so would be the coward's way out. And sooner or later, she was determined to stop being a coward.
* * *
Chapter 19
« ^ »
"Dad arrived night before last," Michael told Brenna at breakfast the following morning. His announcement was a reality check that instantly faded the rosy images left from her trip with Cole.
She set down her cup on the counter with such force that hot coffee sloshed over the rim. She glanced around the kitchen as if she expected her father to materialize. "I didn't think he was coming until next week."
"He sure surprised the hell out of us," Michael said with a rueful smile. "Told me it was your idea that he spend the Fourth with us."
"How nice," she said, sure of no such thing. Grabbing a clean dishcloth from the drawer, she wiped up the coffee off the counter.
"Of course, he managed to get business in, too," Michael added. "He was here in Denver until last night. We took him down to the Springs, and he'll be back late tomorrow or maybe the day after." Michael shook his head, a look of disgust marring his features.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"He says he wants to spend time with us. Then, over the weekend when we have time off, he's busy with other things." A trace of irritation filled Michael's voice. "He says he wants to spend time with Teddy, then invites Jane and me to the Denver Country Club for dinner and says he'll pay for a sitter."
To Brenna, that sounded exactly like the Colonel. Appearances were everything. Children were to be seen and not heard, and she knew from personal experience that it was better to not even be seen. She decided if she was lucky—very lucky—she might be able to avoid seeing her father altogether. She had unpleasant memories of every visit she had with him over the last ten years. She felt a pang of guilt, knowing that she had been so concerned with her own troubles, she had ignored the fact that things had probably been no better for her brother.
CASSIDY'S COURTSHIP Page 19
