When she woke up the next morning, she was covered with a warm knitted blanket, still curled up on the couch. Her heart melted a little at the sight of Jesse on the reclining chair, Sarah curled up next to him like a little doll.
That could be him and our daughter one day. The thought came unbidden, and she shoved it away as quickly as possible. That was way too much to start thinking about. Yeah, she wanted kids, but that was a conversation she was certain he wasn’t ready to have.
“Hey, you,” Jesse said, his voice husky from sleep, startling her, as she had been so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed he had woken. “Sleep like a princess?”
“Maybe the Princess and the Pea. This couch was not made for sleeping. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You just looked so content lying there. I didn’t want to wake you and have you worried all over again.” A frown creased his brow.
She sat up quickly. “What? Did you hear something?”
He shook his head. “No, so far everything seems okay. They’ve given her some medicine to keep the baby from coming, last I heard. If she stays stable through the rest of the day, they may send her home. But it’s probably bed rest for Mommy,” he said, directing this last statement at Sarah, who had just woken up and was sleepily rubbing her eyes.
“I want Mommy,” she said, her lower lip starting to tremble.
Lissa was about to grab her and comfort her, but Jesse came to the rescue.
“She’ll be back before you know it. But before she does, how about your Uncle Jesse takes you for a horseback ride?”
“Horsie!” Sarah clapped her hands together and jumped down from the chair, running toward the back door.
Lissa laughed, relief flooding her that things were okay with Cassie and the baby, at least for the moment. “Hold up there, cowgirl. You need some breakfast and some fresh clothes before you head out there.”
Jesse made a face. “Spoken like such a mom.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she joked. “What about the store, though? Surely one of us needs to head back.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s covered.” He didn’t seem to want to say more so she left it alone, glad for the respite from the hectic days that had filled her life for the last few weeks.
After making a quick breakfast of fresh fruit and oatmeal, Lissa got Sarah changed and put her hair in two braids, the silky blonde hair falling down her back.
“You do that like a pro,” Jesse commented, watching as she tied bows on the ends of the braids.
“Oldest sister,” she reminded him. “I had to help Maggie in the mornings when we were little or we never got out of the house.” She smiled. “Those were crazy days. I remember Mom waking us up and starting breakfast, then coming around and flipping all the lights on all over the house when we were still in bed twenty minutes later. Getting five kids only seven years apart ready for school was quite the undertaking.”
“I can only imagine.” Jesse gave her an odd look that she couldn’t quite place, but then Sarah was up and running, and they chased after her, laughing all the way to the stable.
***
“So you’re telling me your Daddy hasn’t turned you loose by yourself on a horse yet?” Jesse feigned disbelief. “A big girl like you?”
“He says soon, but I don’t know what day soon is. It must be like Christmas and take a long time to get here.” Sarah stuck out her bottom lip in what had to be a classic toddler pout.
Jesse winked at Lissa, who was hiding a grin, and turned back to Sarah. “Well, I’d bet he knows when it is. For now, we should probably let me hold on to the reins, just to be sure.”
Sarah nodded at this statement of complete faith in her father’s ability to know when “soon” would arrive, then they were off, trotting around the open pasture behind the big red barn, the bright spring sun shining down on the quickly growing grass. Jesse was sure he’d have some fresh hay coming into the store from the Martin ranch before much longer.
After forty-five minutes of making circles, Jesse had reached his limit, and he led the horse back to its stall for a rubdown, much to Sarah’s protestations.
Lissa met them in the stable. “That looked like so much fun. I can’t believe how good you’re getting, Sarah.” She held the little girl in her arms after Jesse helped her off the horse.
Sarah nodded happily and hugged Lissa, then remained clinging to her, resting her head on her shoulder. Jesse smiled at the affection between the two and felt a pull in his chest that he didn’t recognize. He dismissed it and returned to grooming the horse while the girls sat on a hay bale and watched, whispering about princesses and horses, and why was it always the prince on the horse? The princess should certainly have her own horse.
Jesse laughed as he listened to their conversation and felt that strange feeling again. He tried to ignore it again when Sarah wanted to ride on his shoulders back to the house, and Lissa walked protectively behind them, assuring Sarah that she wouldn’t fall, but that Aunt Lissa would always be there if she did.
But the damn feeling wouldn’t go away, and he couldn’t for the life of him put a name to it. They played games and watched movies, and after lunch, Sarah and Lissa took a nap together. It was the most relaxing day he’d had in a while.
He envied Jack and the life he had with Cassie and Sarah. Sure, he was busy running his ranch, but Jesse knew firsthand that the life of a businessman was too busy to regularly enjoy lazy family days like this. His father had never managed it, in all the years he’s had the supply store. And as busy as it kept Jesse, he knew he couldn’t either. For the first time, he felt a bit of sorrow at what he’d be missing by devoting his life to the store, and his mother’s warning words came back to him. There is so much more to life than work.
He shrugged it off, not wanting to dwell on it, and was glad when Lissa and Sarah made their reappearance, looking fresh and ready to take on the afternoon.
“Cassie texted,” Lissa said. “They’re going to keep her one more night, but everything looks good, and they think she’ll make it to her due date, or at least close if she takes it easy.”
“Play on the slide, Aunt Cassie.” Sarah pulled on Lissa’s hand, apparently already tiring of the adult conversation.
She raised a brow questioningly at Jesse, and when he nodded, she said, “Okay, you go on out and I’ll make some tea and snacks and meet you out there.”
So domestic. He felt that feeling again as he watched Lissa wander off to the kitchen, and suddenly he knew exactly what it was. Longing. Yearning. For this. A family. Something he’d never really had. And something you never will, he reminded himself roughly. You’ve made your choice. It was the choice he’d always wanted to make. So why did it now feel more like a life sentence?
***
Lissa was exhausted again, but in a good way. She’d kept Sarah enough to know that it took plenty of energy to keep up with her, but two nights in a row was more than she was used to. She shook her head, smiling and remembering what her mother used to say about them all running her ragged. She’d laughed it off as her mother’s melodrama, but she may very well owe her an apology if this is what she’d felt like at the end of every day.
“What are you smiling about?” Jesse came up behind her in the doorway of Sarah’s pink princess and horse room and settled his arms around her waist as they watched her sleep.
She relaxed into him and tilted her head back so she could look at him. “Just wondering how in the world my mother did this times five every day for years and years. I’d say she’s a saint, but we know better.”
Jesse chuckled. “That we do.” His face grew serious. “But she’s an amazing mother. She was always there for you all. You knew you could count on her.”
It was clear in the way he said it that he didn’t feel the same about his own mother.
“You were amazing with Sarah today. I know you don’t think so, but you’d be a wonderful father.” She regretted the words almost as so
on as they were out of her mouth. Definitely not a topic of conversation to have with Jesse Kincade; she knew that much.
Feeling him stiffen against her back, she held back the sigh of frustration.
“Want to watch a movie?” His attempt to change the subject, no doubt.
Not knowing what spurred her on, she turned to him, narrowed her eyes with a slight shake of her head and said, “No. I want to talk about it.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the living room so they wouldn’t wake Sarah.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” The muscle in his jaw twitched repeatedly.
“I think there is.” She said it softly, but there was firmness in her voice too. “You’ve opened up to me so much in the past few weeks. Are you going to shut down again now when I want to talk about something you don’t like?”
“Looks like it.” He squared his shoulders and turned away from her slightly.
“Jesse,” she said softly. “You aren’t your father. You said so yourself.”
He whirled on her, eyes blazing with a mixture of fury and pain. “You don’t know that.”
Taking a step closer, she put her hands on her hips and looked him dead on. “You think I don’t know that? That I don’t know who you are deep down? God, Jesse, I get so tired of this.”
“Tired? Tired of what? Of me being honest with you and telling you like it is? I get it, you don’t want to accept the truth about it. You have this idea in your head that you can change me, make me see the light or some garbage like that.”
Lissa felt her heart crack a little. “Is that really what you think? You’re the one who won’t accept the truth. I see you for what you are. But you don’t want to see it. You’ve convinced yourself that you're just like your father and that you have no chance of being better than him.”
“I told you that I know I’m not my father. Isn’t that why we’re together in the first place? I realized that. I took a risk, a leap of faith if you will, and put myself out there to be with you. I know I’m not him.” His temper was on a tight leash, and his voice shook with the strain of keeping it in.
Lissa shook her head sadly, hurting for him and what he thought he could never be. “But that only extends to me, is that right? Or not even all of me, really. You’re only willing to take it so far—to keep what we have under the limits that you’ve set.”
Jesse turned and rammed his fist into a supporting beam in the middle of the big open room. It shuddered and creaked but remained firm. When he turned back around, the anger was fading from his eyes, replaced by regret.
Not something she wanted to see on his face.
“Was it a mistake then? I told you from the beginning that I couldn’t make you any promises. That I could only give you myself, as I am. Well, this is me. Yeah, I’m broken. I come from a wrecked home life, and I don’t know how to be anything else. I don’t know how to be a husband. Or a father. And I refuse to do to you or a child what my father did to us. Business first, always. That’s how it was with him. I wasn’t second, or even third.”
Lissa put her hands up, trying to calm him and wanting to take him in her arms and comfort him. “Jesse, you’re getting ahead of yourself. You always do. I didn’t say anything about marriage and children.”
“You didn’t have to,” he bit out. “I saw you with her today. I’ve heard you talk about your family. I’ve seen you with your family. I told you from the beginning that I can’t be what you need. But you didn’t listen. And I wasn’t strong enough to resist.”
She wanted to regret the words she’d spoken, to take back the entire conversation and make things right between them again, but she couldn’t. It needed to be said. He needed to hear it.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t believe you.” He started to speak, but she cut him off. “Oh, I know you believe it. You think the worst of yourself. But I don’t buy it. I don’t think you’ll hurt me. I don’t think you’re like your father. I think you’d make an amazing husband and father. No, let me finish,” she said when he tried to interrupt her again. He nodded. “But what I think doesn’t matter. Not even in the slightest. Because until you believe it yourself, it does neither of us any good.”
Jesse remained silent for a long time, staring out the back windows to the blankness of the darkened barn and pasture beyond. His jaw ticked and he breathed shallowly. “So now what,” he finally said. “Where does that leave us?”
Lissa squeezed her eyes tightly and took several deep breaths until she knew she could speak without her voice shaking. “Exactly where we were before,” she said evenly.
His eyes snapped to her face, searching. “What? I don’t understand. I told you I can’t give you anything more. Yes, I love you, and I want to be with you. But that’s all I can give. Selfish as I am, I want you to be okay with that because I can’t even think about being without you now that I’ve had you. But you have to understand what I’m saying.”
She swallowed against the tightening of her throat and nodded. “I know that. You’ve made your position very clear. And I’ve accepted it. Then, and now.”
He stepped closer and traced her jaw with his finger. “I know it’s wrong of me to keep you to myself and not give you what I know you want. So I have to be sure. You have to be sure. Are you willing to be with me, knowing that I’ll never be able to give you a family and a home like the one you grew up in? Are you really okay with that?”
Closing her eyes and letting the feeling of him being near wash over her, his touch that always made her come undone settling her slightly, she leaned into his chest and rested there, nodding. “Yes, I am.”
And as she sank into his embrace, she wondered how she would deal with the consequences of the lie.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Upon returning to the store that Monday, Jesse was more than a little surprised to find his mother and Abby at the front desk going over the schedule. She’d told him last Thursday, the day he and Lissa had left so abruptly to look after Sarah, that she was bringing Abby in to help cover for him and Lissa. Not that there was much they could do really, but Abby hadn’t been trained to run the front desk since Lissa had hired her, so he left it up to his mom. Not a lot had changed in the years since she’d worked there, other than computer systems.
“Morning.” He looked warily at Abby, but to his surprise, she offered him a tentative smile. He hadn’t seen her since that terrible dinner, and this was nothing like the woman he had met that night.
“Honey! So glad you’re here. Abigail is coming along nicely with her training.” She said it like a proud mother, which struck him as more than a little strange.
Jesse rounded the corner of the counter and gave his mom a quick hug before turning his gaze back to Abby. “Glad to hear it. Welcome to the team.” The words sounded forced, even to his ears.
When his mother gave her a small smile of encouragement and said, “I’ll leave you two now,” before turning to go into the office, he was even more bewildered. What was going on?
Maybe work was getting to him? First Lissa had given him what for, then she’d kissed him and said it was fine and had gone on since then as if nothing had ever happened. Now, his mother was acting strangely, and his mean bear of a sister was smiling sweetly.
Had he woken up on another planet?
Watching Abby from the corner of his eye while he looked over the potential shift schedule they’d just been reviewing for the grand opening of the boutique, he jumped when she reached out her hand to him.
“Jesse, I want to apologize for the way I acted the other night. I don’t even know how to explain my behavior. Your mother has been nothing but kind and welcoming. Your father—less so. But I can see that my original reading of the situation was way off base.”
He turned to study her, her face so similar to his own, but softer, more feminine. She appeared to be speaking earnestly, and the crease between her brows and the way she worried her lip with her teeth made it clear that she was nervous how he would respond to thi
s apology.
He could be a jerk. He wanted to. He almost thought she deserved it. But something stopped him. Maybe it was the pain in her eyes, pain that would be invisible to most people. But it was something he recognized. Disappointment. God knows he’d felt it enough at the hand of his father. And now it appeared that she was feeling it too.
He sighed and reached out tentatively to squeeze her shoulder. “I don’t know much about this situation with you and my dad. But I do have an idea of what you must be feeling right now if things are going how I expect they are with him.” He saw her eyes get a little glassy and prayed she wouldn’t start crying. He couldn’t handle that right now.
She took a steadying breath and nodded, regaining her composure. “Let’s just say things aren’t at all what I expected. And you didn’t deserve what I dished out the other night. I came here with a lot of preconceived notions of what I’d find. You, the precious son that had received our father’s favor, me that cast aside bastard child. Obviously one of those isn’t true.” She grimaced. “I have a lot to work out in my head about where this leaves me, but I do know one thing. I have a brother, and while we didn’t grow up together, I’d like very much to get to know him now. Can we start over?”
The hope and fear mixed in her face reflected so clearly what he had felt that night before he met her. And though she’d behaved horribly, he expected she had her reasons, whether he thought they were justified or not.
Nodding, he gave her smile, sincere this time. “Jesse Kincade, long lost brother, and shocking disappointment of a son,” he said sardonically, sticking out his hand to her.
She laughed, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake. “Abby Stewart, dismissed love-child.”
He laughed too and felt that hope growing inside him again that he may get to have the much wished for sibling after all.
“So,” he said, jumping right back into work. There was a lot to be done in a very short time. “Let’s start by going over the scheduling. Maybe we can get some lunch later to catch up on other things, but for now, we better look like we’re working because here comes Lissa. This boutique is her baby—er, pet project—and she will accept nothing but the best from anyone involved,” he whispered conspiratorially.
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