“I’m looking at a lot of important decisions in the next few days,” she told him, when he didn’t answer her last comment. “It might be—helpful if I had some idea what your feelings are before I start making those decisions.”
Do you love me? In bald terms, that was what she needed to know. But she and Wiley had never discussed love—had never even mentioned the word between them.
Suddenly, that didn’t seem like a very good omen.
“I’ve told you what I think.”
Wiley was leaning one brawny shoulder against the doorframe between the living room and the hall. There it was, Rae-Anne thought, that trademark Cotter slouch, covering up whatever tangle of feelings was hidden inside.
“I think you should accept this job at the greenhouse and stay in Wimberley at least until the baby’s born. After that-”
“Wiley.” She glared at him, starting to feel angry again. “I said I wanted to talk about feelings, not about career counseling. I can find a job for myself. I can find a place to live. I can figure out what to do about the baby. What I can’t figure out on my own is what to do about you.”
Her voice wobbled over the last word, and she caught herself sharply. She’d come this far without breaking down in tears, and this didn’t seem like a very good time to start.
“I’ll be on hand to help you out. You know that.”
“Do I? You mean you’ll help me rent a van so I can get my furniture down to Wimberley, and you’ll help me set up my VCR and maybe shop for some baby clothes?” He started to answer, but she didn’t give him the chance. “Because I just told you that’s not what I’m looking for from you, Wiley. If we’re going to be together at all—if we’re going to be together—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Do you love me? was hanging in the air, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
What if he said no?
“You’re asking for more than I have to give.”
That wasn’t as bad as a blunt negative, but it didn’t exactly make Rae-Anne’s heart leap with joy, either. “How do you know what I’m asking?” she demanded.
“Because I know you, Rae-Anne. You want a lot from life. You expect a lot. And you deserve it. You know as well as I do that the reason you were having doubts about marrying old Rodney was that you just didn’t love him enough.”
She took a big breath, feeling it quiver in her throat. This was it, she thought. Wiley had introduced the word love, and she needed to follow up on it.
“What if—I did love you enough?”
Something flashed in his dark eyes, and she was almost frightened by the intensity of it. It was like seeing a wild horse’s eyes roll just before it ran away or lashed out.
“I’m the wrong man for this.” He sounded torn, reluctant, as though he didn’t want to say the words but couldn’t see any way around them. “I’m the wrong man for you. I don’t know anything about love. Hell, I’m not even sure I want to know about it.”
“What do you mean?” Fear made her voice sharp.
He sighed and dragged a hand through the hair that had fallen forward over his eyes. “I can’t love the way you do, Rae-Anne,” he said. “I just don’t—believe in it. The kind of love I’ve known in my life has always screwed things up more than it’s fixed them. Sometimes it’s a downright dangerous thing. It’s not something I know how to handle. It’s certainly not something that makes me think I would be a good parent.” He gave a short, cynical laugh. “Hell, I can’t even imagine it,” he added.
She had no good answer for him this time. She couldn’t help picturing him looking out the window of that little house in Abilene, watching his father disappear into the dark night and turning to face the slow disintegration of whatever love his family had known. Had something died in his heart at that moment that simply couldn’t be brought back to life?
Maybe none of the Cotter brothers knew how to handle love, she thought. Maybe she was crazy even to be talking about this with Wiley.
But the memory of their lovemaking was still so sweet and so vivid. And as for what she’d felt when he’d turned his face toward the unborn child in her belly and held her so close against him—
“I know all about how love can hurt you,” she said. “You know I do. But if I really believed there was no point to trying again, I wouldn’t be here right now. That’s what makes me want this baby, Wiley, even though its father is probably going to be doing ten to twenty for money laundering by the time it’s born. My own childhood may not have been so great, but I can still make something good for this child.”
Her voice wavered again. It was harder to come back from the slip this time. Was it because she’d just admitted to herself, in the most hidden depths of her heart, that when Wiley had been holding her earlier this morning, she’d found herself lost in impossible visions of raising a family with him, watching him learn to love again as he held his own children and hers?
She’d never allowed herself these thoughts before. And the bleak look in Wiley’s eyes made her think she probably should have kept it that way.
“Maybe this baby won’t exactly have the home and stability I was planning for,” she said, more forcefully because of the tears that were trying to find their way into her voice. “But it’ll be loved. It will always be loved, just as much as I can manage.”
Wiley’s silence when she finished speaking was worse than any answer could have been.
She couldn’t tell if he was angry, or miserable, or just impatient with the whole turn their discussion had taken. His face was nearly blank when he raised it to look at her again, and his voice was bleak.
“Maybe that’s the difference between us, Rae-Anne,” he said. “You’re willing to go ahead with that kind of hope, and I’m just not.”
His words echoed in her mind like a series of doors slamming. I’m not…. I’m not…. I’m not….
“Not ever?” She couldn’t meet his eyes as she asked it.
But she could see him shaking his head, slowly but definitely. “I won’t promise things I can’t be sure I’ll deliver,” he told her. “I won’t do it, not even for you.”
Not even for you had a slightly comforting sound to it. She must mean something to him, Rae-Anne thought. That incredible moment of unity in the midst of making love hadn’t just been a delusion, then.
But it wasn’t enough to dispel the choking sensation in her throat or the hollowness in her chest. She’d laid her feelings open to Wiley Cotter, and he was telling her he didn’t want them.
In fact, he was spelling it out in detail, just in case she hadn’t already gotten his message. Rae-Anne tried to swallow, gave it up and reached for the handle of the front door next to her. She’d maneuvered herself into a spot right next to an escape route, she realized, and wondered fleetingly whether she’d done it on purpose, whether she’d instinctively known, from the dark look on Wiley’s face when he’d wakened after making love, that it was going to come to this.
“Try to understand,” he was saying, but her mind had already moved on to how she was going to get out of Austin with no car and no money, and where she could possibly go next. “I’m not like you. I can’t think about an unborn child and promise to make it happy. How the hell can anyone promise another person’s happiness? I spent my whole childhood listening to promises, and none of them meant a damn thing.”
“I know all about empty promises.” Her voice was soft and sad.
“Then you should know why I won’t take a chance on making one. I’ll help you get your feet on the ground, and I’ll help settle this thing with Rodney, because those are things I know I can do. But don’t ask me to promise happiness, Rae-Anne. Happily ever after is more than I can do.”
She couldn’t stand to listen to the ache in Wiley’s voice. There was something pleading in it all of a sudden, something that begged her to understand.
But he was saying all the wrong things.
“What if I promise you something I can
’t come up with?” Was she hallucinating, or was she seeing the glassy sheen of tears brightening his dark eyes? “Damn it, RaeAnne, what if I hurt you again the way I hurt you before?”
She couldn’t let herself listen to the anguish in his words, or think about what those unshed tears might mean. Wiley had told her he couldn’t love her, and she didn’t need to hear it again.
“What would happen?” She undid the top lock on the door as she spoke. “I don’t know what would happen, Wiley. And unfortunately, we’re never going to have a chance to find out.”
Chapter 13
“Have you got a green light yet?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?” Wiley felt impatience eating at him, making him curt with his brother as he stepped into Jack’s office. “If that bastard Rodney Dietrich managed to slip through the cracks—”
“Keep your shirt on, Wiley. I know this is hard for you to believe, but occasionally people do manage to get things done without the benefit of your help. We’re waiting for Mack to check in, and once all his people are in place, we’ll go.”
“And find Dietrich’s ranch empty, chances are.”
Jack sat down behind his desk and shook his head at his older brother. “Sounds to me like you’re getting a little short on sleep,” he said. “There’s no reason for Dietrich to think we’re closing in on him.”
“There’s Rae-Anne—”
Wiley didn’t finish the sentence. Suddenly, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that this was just business, all of his thoughts seemed to be revolving around RaeAnne.
He’d caught Jack on his car phone and changed their meeting place this morning because the thought of hanging around his house remembering Rae-Anne’s words and the soft hurt on her face and the erotic fulfillment of their lovemaking was simply too much for him to take.
And he was antsy because he needed to get this wrapped up, for Rae-Anne’s sake. He didn’t know where she’d gone or what she was planning to do, but he wouldn’t rest easy until he’d completed the one part of this business that he felt competent at. And that meant seeing Rodney Dietrich under arrest at the soonest possible moment.
“Speaking of Rae-Anne—” Jack seemed to have picked up on the real reason for Wiley’s anxiety. “Was that who answered your phone this morning?”
“Yeah.” He frowned at his brother, daring him to go on asking questions about it.
Unfortunately, Jack had never been able to resist a dare. “What’s going on between you two, anyway?” he asked.
“Not a damn thing.”
Jack nodded slowly. “That must be why this big old dark cloud appears over your head every time I mention her name,” he said.
“Shut up, little brother. My only concern about RaeAnne Blackburn is to get Rodney Dietrich off her back, the same as it was when this whole thing started.”
The phone on Jack’s desk rang, and Wiley was spared any more perceptive comments. It had been the same way this morning when he’d met Jack at the Cotter Investigations office to hand over the tape and photographs. Jack had asked after Rae-Anne then, too, and had seemed to see beneath the surface of Wiley’s chopped-off comments to the struggle that he was trying to cover up.
It was hell having brothers who knew him inside out, Wiley thought as he leaned back in his chair and propped his boot heels on the edge of Jack’s desk.
And at the same time, Jack and Sam were the only family ties he had. Maybe the quiet attachment the Cotter brothers had for each other didn’t go far enough to suit RaeAnne’s romantic heart, but damn it, it had been enough for Wiley, these past few years.
Was it still enough? Would it ever feel like enough again, after the past few days?
He wished he knew.
“She’s where?” Jack’s question cut into Wiley’s thoughts, startling him until he told himself that “she” didn’t necessarily mean Rae-Anne Blackburn. There were other female human beings in the world, after all, even though Wiley’s mind was filled with thoughts of one particularly independent, auburn-haired, blue-eyed woman.
But Jack’s next words made Wiley sit up straight again, clunking his heels onto the polished office floor. “Why the hell would she go back there?” Jack was asking. “According to Wiley, she was through with Dietrich for good.”
“Jack, what the hell—”
His brother waved him away, listening hard to whoever was on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, I know. All right. I got it. We’ll be there.”
Wiley was on his feet by the time Jack hung up the phone. “What is it?” he demanded.
Jack was shaking his head as he reached for the suit jacket he’d slung over the back of his chair. “According to the guy we have posted to keep an eye on the Dietrich ranch, RaeAnne Blackburn just showed up there.”
“How the hell—”
“Apparently she took a cab.”
Wiley couldn’t get it to make sense. “A cab?” he repeated. “From Austin? That’s a hell of a long ride.”
“Apparently Dietrich forked over the fare at the door. I thought you said she’d left him, Wiley.”
“I’d have put money on it.” Wiley reached for his jacket—the rain had intensified during the day, and his dark green windbreaker was still damp to the touch—and followed his brother out of the temporary office the FBI had rented while Jack was working on Rodney Dietrich’s case.
“Well, she’s back there now. And her timing is way off, big brother, because if Rodney tries to put up any kind of a fight when we go in to arrest him, there could be some bullets flying around that ranch of his pretty soon.”
This was all wrong.
For one thing, she’d counted on Rodney being away from the ranch when she arrived. She’d figured he would be meeting with his mob cronies at the San Antonio hotel, and that she would be able to get in and get out without encountering anyone.
But Rodney was home. Judging by the smell of brandy on his breath he’d been reverting to his old manner of relaxing himself.
And while she’d been retrieving her little heart-shaped locket from her dressing table, Rodney had paid off her cab, sending it on its way. Rae-Anne found herself suddenly furious when she saw it driving toward the ranch gates.
“You’re wasting your time, Rodney,” she informed him. “I only came back because I wanted the locket my father gave me. Now that I’ve got it, I’m just going to call another cab and get out of here again.”
“No, you’re not. We’re going to go away together and sort all of this out.”
The nearest telephone was in Rodney’s private office. Rae-Anne headed that way, intent on escaping from here as soon as she possibly could. But it was impossible to bite back her answer to Rodney’s words.
“Were you and Danielle trying to sort things out, too, when she was killed?” she demanded tightly.
Rodney shrugged, following her into the office. “Danielle wouldn’t listen to reason. She wanted to bring the whole thing down, and she couldn’t see that nobody would benefit from that, including her. I know you’re more reasonable than that, Rae-Anne. Especially because you’ve got the baby to think of.”
He gave her a confident smile, and Rae-Anne cursed herself for being so blind to that good-natured facade of his. She’d thought his charm had been a part of a naturally easygoing nature, a sign that he’d put his hellion days permanently behind him. Instead, it had been covering up things she couldn’t bear to think about.
“I am thinking about the baby,” she told him. “That’s why I’m leaving. It’s only because you’re the father of my child-”
“Our child,” he corrected.
Rae-Anne shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not anymore. This child is not going to be just a prop to make you feel like you’ve succeeded in life, Rodney. And with the proof the FBI has, I don’t imagine I’ll have a hard time getting a judge to give me sole custody.”
“Proof?” He said it as though it was a word in a language he didn’t know.
“Yes, proof,” she repeated. “I was there last night. I saw you making those deposits. I saw you meeting with those two men—the same two who threatened me at the hotel on Monday.”
“They threatened you?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.
So he hadn’t known, Rae-Anne thought. It was cold comfort, and it came far too late to save what she had once felt for Rodney Dietrich.
“They threatened me and the baby,” she told him. “Now do you understand why I can’t let you have anything to do with this child?”
Rodney walked to the office window and then turned to face her. Outside, beyond the thrashing branches of the shrubs that lined the back of the ranch house, the weather was turning uglier.
Just like her thoughts. Rae-Anne felt suddenly caged, caught in a comfortable, expensive trap. She reached for the phone, but before she could lift the receiver, Rodney stretched out one foot and kicked the cord away from the jack. It was a petulant gesture, a child’s frustrated revenge, and it made Rae-Anne even madder.
She knew part of her fury was at Wiley, and part of it at herself, for getting mixed up in all of this in the first place. But she didn’t have time to sort through it all now. She focused all her anger on Rodney as she spoke.
“You may have gotten away with silencing one wife, Rodney, but I don’t intend to help you do it a second time,” she told him. “If you’re not going to let me call a cab, then you’ll have to lend me the keys to one of the ranch vehicles. I promise you’ll get it back.”
He still looked puzzled. “I would never hurt you,” he said. “If I’d known those two had threatened you—my God, the thought of them saying they would hurt the baby-”
She’d found his devotion touching in the beginning. She’d been glad he wanted this child, and relieved at the idea that her son or daughter would have two parents and a permanent home.
Now, the smooth sound of Rodney’s voice made the flesh at the back of Rae-Anne’s neck prickle with discomfort. He’d needed a wife and a family to complete his image of himself as a gentleman rancher, the son of a well-known family carrying on a proud Texas tradition. And she’d been nothing more than a part of that plan, a piece of his veneer.
The Wedding Assignment Page 19
