“This?”
“Yes. This. Us.”
“No.” He spoke softly. Almost hopefully. “We don’t. We don’t have to talk about it. You could just let it go.”
She did consider that, letting it go. Again. Seriously. Maybe he had it right. Now wasn’t a good time. She should choose a better one.
But when was a better time? There was no better time when the man you loved simply didn’t want to hear it.
“Gabe, I…there are things that are bothering me, about us. About where we’re going, which is basically nowhere.”
He turned and strode toward the kitchen, stopping in the arch that divided it from the living area. For a moment, he just stood there, his back to her. With effort, she kept her mouth shut and waited for him to face her again.
Finally, he did. “Is there some reason we have to go somewhere? What’s wrong with where we are? I thought you were happy.”
Gently, she laid the bouquet on the coffee table, bending and straightening with slow care. “I am happy. But I’m not…happy.”
He raked a hand back through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Oh, Gabe. I think you do.” He was so far away. He should be closer. It should all be different. Better. More romantic and tender. But it wasn’t. It was…what it was. And she needed to stop lying to herself about it. She needed to tell the truth. “Gabe, I feel like I’m your mistress or something.”
He made a low noise of disbelief at that, and shook his head in a disgusted way.
“Wait,” she said. “Hear me out. I mean, I am your mistress, really, aren’t I? Or whatever they call it nowadays. You keep me tucked away. I never go into your world, you come to mine. And you buy me. You shower me with expensive gifts, you spend thousands on fixing up my ranch. You hire people to work for me.”
His blue eyes flashed with hurt anger. “What? Now you resent that I helped you out a little.”
“No. Absolutely not. I don’t resent you or any of the great things you’ve done for me. Not in any way. Except for the jewelry you won’t stop giving me, I appreciate everything, all of it. You’ve been so good to me and I know it. But the problem is, Gabe. I’m really not the mistress type.”
The anger had faded from his eyes. He came toward her, at last, and reached for her hand. Hope rose, warm and sweet, within her as his fingers closed around hers.
“Mary…” He said the word so tenderly. Maybe she really was getting through to him. “Come on.” He led her to the sofa. They sat down. She almost believed it would be all right.
Then he asked, “What’s happened? Has someone been giving you heartache about you and me? Just tell me. I’ll handle it.”
She let out a soft cry of disappointment and frustration. So much for daring to imagine she might be getting through to him. “I do not believe you just said that.”
“Answer my question. Who is it?”
“Handle it?” She pulled her hand free of his. “You’ll handle it? Oh. Because you’re the fixer, right? I tell you who’s been saying mean things about me and you go ‘fix’ them?”
“Who is it?” he demanded, stubborn as a slab of stone. He wasn’t getting it. He refused to get it.
“Let me be more direct,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I wish to hell you would.”
“There’s no one. Honestly. No one but you. And me. It’s us, Gabe. We’re giving me heartache.”
“Okay.” He put up both hands as if she had a gun on him. “I give. What, exactly, is it you want from me?”
It was the pertinent question. The urge rose again, to evade. To put it off. But he had asked. Finally. At last.
So she answered. “I want to be part of your world, Gabe. I want to meet your family. And I want to marry you. I’m in no big rush about it. It doesn’t have to be today. Or next week or next month. But someday in the not-too-distant future, please. I love you with all my heart and I want us to be a family—you and me and Ginny and any other babies we might be fortunate enough to have. That’s what I want. Marriage. And a life with you, a life at your side, not on the side.”
He stared at her as if she’d just hit him over the head with a large, blunt object. “Married,” he said bleakly. “You want to get married….”
She refused to even flinch. “Yes, I do. What about you?”
He rose. And he started walking. In the center of the room, he stopped and turned to her. For several endless seconds he just stared at her. And then he shrugged. “Fine,” he said flatly. “All right. If that’s what you need to be happy, we’ll get married.”
Mary let out a cry of pure distress. She started to rise. But when he backed up a step, making it clear he didn’t want her near him right then, she sank to the cushions again. “Oh, Gabe, no. Don’t…say you’ll marry me just because I want it. That’s not what I want. That could never work.”
He shook his head. “Hold on. Just hold the hell on. Let me get clear on this. You not only want me to marry you, to promise we’ll be together till we’re both old and gray, you want me to convince you that what you want is what I want. Well, I don’t. I just want you, Mary. I always have, since the day you almost had Ginny in the backseat of my Escalade. I want you. That’s the bottom line. And whatever I have to do to keep you, I’ll do it.”
“Gabe,” she pleaded. “Will you listen to yourself? You grew up with married parents—two people who love each other and are happy in their marriage. I can’t believe you think we can be happy together if you don’t even want to be married to me.”
“Happy.” His lip curled in a sneer. “Come on. You’ve laid down your terms and I’ve accepted them. I’ll marry you whenever and wherever you say. It’s settled. Oh, and my father invited you out to Bravo Ridge for a family get-together this weekend. So there you have it. You’ll be meeting the family. That should satisfy your other demand.”
“Demand?” How had this gotten so far out of hand? “That’s not right, and you know it. I never made any demands.”
“Sure as hell sounded like you did to me.”
Should she have known that bringing up marriage to him would be like waving a red flag in front of a big, mad bull? She just hadn’t. Yes, she’d been ready for his reluctance and his attempts at avoidance. She’d even been prepared for a sweet and smoothly done refusal.
But not this…raging acceptance. It wasn’t like him, not like him at all. Somehow, she’d managed to hit a major nerve with him.
“Gabe.” She stood, slowly, as if he were some wild creature she’d let in the house, one that might attack if she made any sudden moves. He watched her, every muscle in his big body drawn tight, as she approached. She stopped maybe four feet away from him, not daring to move closer, and she pleaded with outstretched arms. “Gabe, please. I…” She had no idea how to go on. She let her arms drop and she stared at him, feeling hopeless, just completely out of her depth.
Somehow, her half-finished plea and the painful silence that followed reached him when all her passionate arguments had only fanned the fire. His body relaxed, his wide shoulders slumping.
And she cleared the final distance between them. She looked up into his eyes, seeking…something. Reassurance, maybe. A few words to let her know his irrational anger had left him.
He gave her those words. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed his eyes, like a man waking from a trance. “That was way out of line. I just…I lost it.” He shook his head, bewildered. “I never lose it…”
Ginny chose that moment to wake up and start fussing. They both heard her cries from the baby monitor on the kitchen table. Mary knew a sweet relief at the sudden excuse to do something other than stand there and stare at him, to try and start picking up the pieces after the cruel things he had said.
Gabe seemed relieved, too. “Let’s go see what she wants.”
So they went up and took care of the baby. When she was fed and changed, Gabe carried her downstairs and sat with her on the sofa while Mary got the
dinner on the table.
She called him to eat. He put the baby down on the play mat he’d bought her and Ginny lay there, making happy little noises, staring up at the brightly colored mobile that had come with the mat.
The meal was a silent one, painfully so. Later, he carried Ginny back up to bed. When he came down, he took Mary’s hand and led her to the bedroom.
They undressed in silence. In bed, he kissed her. But that was all. She turned in his arms and he held her, loosely. It didn’t feel right to make love that night. There was a scary distance between them now. She didn’t know how to bridge it.
Apparently, neither did he.
In the morning, when she woke to a sliver of sunlight peeking between the curtains, he was already awake, lying on his side, watching her.
He touched her night-tangled hair, smoothing it. And he spoke to her, softly. “When I was a kid, my parents had some kind of almost-breakup. They fought all the time, slept in separate rooms for a while. My dad even moved out for a couple of weeks. To me, well, it just felt like the collapse of my world was coming. That nothing would be right again, you know?”
She nodded, and she freed a hand from under the sheet to brush the back of it along his beard-rough cheek.
“I don’t think the littler kids had any idea what was going on, but Ash and I were the oldest. Old enough to know there was a problem. A big one. Old enough to know what divorce was, and to be certain it was happening in our family.”
“But they didn’t divorce. They got through it. And now they have a good marriage…”
“That’s right. They did get past it. And they’re happy now, together. Ash used to tell me they would work it out. He would play the big brother so well, tell me not to sweat it. There was no way our mom and dad would get a divorce. It turned out he was right. They worked it out, whatever it was. But in the meantime, while they battled, I remember thinking it just wasn’t worth it, that I would never get married. I would be single and happy. And I have been.”
“Until I came along and…messed with the program?”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. Or a groan. “That’s about the size of it.”
They were silent for a time, just lying there in the early morning quiet.
Then he said what he’d said last night, only this time he spoke tenderly. “I do love you, Mary. I want you to have what you want. And if it’s marriage, you got it.”
Oh, she longed to wrap her arms around him and whisper her yes against his warm lips, to tell herself that love would conquer all in the end, that in time he would be glad she had forced his hand. But the truth remained. “It’s not what you want, though, is it?”
“What can I say?”
“How about yes or no?”
It took him a minute. But then, he admitted, “Uh-uh. Marriage isn’t what I want.”
She nodded. Yeah, it hurt to hear it. But the truth was like that sometimes.
He said, “And I take it you don’t feel right about going on as we have been.”
She looked in his eyes. “No, Gabe. I don’t.”
“So I guess that means we’re in for a little time apart.”
She touched him again, laying her hand against his throat, loving the feel of him, wondering how she would bear the days—and the nights—without him. Tenderness welled up within her. He had put it so kindly, a little time apart. But they both knew he meant that this was it. They were breaking up.
He pressed his forehead to hers. And he sighed. And against her thigh, she felt him, soft and smooth. Limp. Vulnerable.
She reached down and touched him, cradling him. He sucked in a hard breath, responding instantly to her caress.
“Mary.” He said her name on a rough husk of breath. “Are you sure?”
She stroked him, nodding. It seemed to her the best way, the most beautiful way, to say goodbye. “One last time…”
With a groan, he reached for her. Eight weeks had passed since they first made love, eight weeks since she’d started on the pill. They no longer had to bother with condoms. She took him in her arms, pulling him down on top of her, opening her legs for him.
But it was no good. She wasn’t ready. He felt her body’s resistance and he lifted away to look down at her again. He smiled at her.
And she smiled back, a wobbly, sad little smile. “I love you.”
“And I love you.” He touched her, then, gently. Teasingly, at first. His knowing fingers played her so well. He knew what aroused her, what made her body open like a flower in the sun.
It didn’t take long and she was moaning, moving her hips against his stroking hand, urging him to come to her, to fill her, one more time.
And he did. He eased her thighs apart and settled between them again. That time, when he pushed in, her body gave no resistance.
With a low moan of pure pleasure, she accepted him. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and they began to move. Together, as one.
It lasted for a long time. It was the sweetest small eternity.
In the end, he rolled them, so she could take the top position. She rose up, pressing down at the same time, claiming him even more fully than before.
He took her hips in his two hands and surged up inside her as she met his thrusts, bending her body close to him, kissing his neck, his shoulders, pressing her lips right over his heart as she rode him. When he came, he pushed himself up to her and then held still as he spilled himself inside her. She watched his face, memorizing it, for all the days to come.
“I love you, Gabe Bravo.” And her climax took her, filling her up, spilling over until every nerve in her body sang of sweet fulfillment.
Afterward, they had no time to laze around, to draw out their goodbye.
The baby cried. And the hands needed breakfast.
Later, she walked him out to his Escalade for the last time. The sun was a third of the way up in the sky by then and white, cottony clouds floated so prettily up there in the blue.
He told her, “I’m going to go on paying wages for Wyatt and Ty. Don’t argue with me, okay? We’ve been through this. They need the jobs and you need the help. I’ve also put them on health insurance plans. You and Ginny, too.” When she opened her mouth to protest that it was way too much, he put a finger against her lips. “Shh. It’s no biggie for me. And it will make me feel good, to know I don’t have to worry that you have what you need.”
She swallowed down her protests and nodded. It was the best she could manage at that moment. The hard tumble of a hundred emotions had stolen her voice.
He continued. “I’ll have all the paperwork sent to you, so you’ll be in control.”
She managed a shaky, “Okay.”
“And there’s a college trust fund for Ginny. I’ll send you the papers on that, too.”
Mary sucked in a sharp breath and put her hand over her mouth. Again she nodded. And somehow she got three words out. “Thank you, Gabe.”
He lifted her chin with a finger. “Take care of yourself, Mary.”
“You, too.”
“And Ginny…”
“I will.”
And then he got in the Escalade. She stepped back as he started the car up and put it in gear. And then she made herself stand there, watching, arms wrapped tight around her middle, as he left her for the last time.
She refused to let a single tear fall until he was out of sight.
Chapter Fifteen
Inside, she found that the flowers he’d brought her the night before were too wilted to save. And the present still waited on the side table, behind the lamp, where he’d set it. She tossed the flowers. It would have hurt too much to have to look at them, anyway.
She dithered over the gift, knowing how he was. She would only insult him if she sent it back. Still, she wasn’t willing to open it and keep it for herself. In the end, she took it, fancy wrapping and all, and put it in the top of her closet, in the back. Maybe someday she would give it to Ginny, tell her it was from a man who had once
loved both of them very much.
After that, well, she had articles due, a baby to raise and a ranch to take care of. In the days that followed, as June became July and summer brought temperatures in the triple-digits two weeks in a row, she missed Gabe. So much. His absence was like an empty ache in the center of her. When it got too bad, she would hold Ginny close, breathe in the sweet baby smell of her skin, and tell herself the hurt would pass. Her love would fade. Or if it didn’t, it would change. Become something gentler, easier to bear.
Sometimes, alone in bed at night, she talked to Rowdy. She told him how certain she was that she had done the right thing, sending Gabe away. But oh, it did hurt. It made her heart feel like a tattered thing, forlorn and dragging, inside her chest.
Rowdy never answered when she talked to him. Dead men rarely do. But thinking of him, imagining the encouraging things he might have said, well, it did make her feel better. It made her stronger, kind of put things in perspective for her. A person made the best choices she could.
And life went on.
Ida knew she was hurting. After Mary told her mother-in-law that Gabe was gone and wouldn’t be back, Ida made a point to come out to the house every other day, at least. And though she was not a very physical woman, except with her granddaughter, she would hug Mary more. She would reach across the table and touch Mary’s hand. And Mary would think how fortunate she was. To have a friend like Ida, a baby like Ginny, work she loved and a fine place to call home.
Her friends dropped by often. Garland came and helped out Ty and Wyatt with a few things around the ranch and then stayed for whatever meal was available. Donna Lynn showed up once a week, at least. And so did Mary’s other friends from town.
On the Fourth of July, the chamber of commerce in Wulf City threw a big picnic in Wulf Park. Mary took Ginny and joined Ida, Donna Lynn and most of Donna Lynn’s family. They played softball and roasted hot dogs. And when dark came, there were fireworks. Mary watched the bright explosions in the Texas sky and wondered if Gabe was watching fireworks somewhere, too.
The Bravo Bachelor Page 16
