Ginny pushed the blanket away and stood up. She walked to the bedroom door. It was ajar. Peering inside, she saw Cole was already in bed.
She pushed the door open and walked into the room. By the light of the moon streaming through the window, she saw he had the blankets pulled up only to his waist, leaving his chest bare. Just the sight of it made her mouth go dry, and she wondered what he had on, or didn’t have on, beneath those blankets.
Just as she was thinking maybe this was a bad idea, he shifted and pulled the sheets aside for her to lie down next to him. Crazy warning thoughts rushed through her mind. What if this really is just a ploy to get me into his bed? What if he really does want sex?
What if I decide I want it, too?
It was that third one that really got to her, because when it came right down to it, Cole wasn’t the only one she wondered if she could trust. She’d thought more about sex in the past three days than she ever had in her life, and she didn’t know if she was up to telling him no one more time.
She took a deep breath and lay down, resting her head on the pillow, and he pulled the covers gently over her. As he pulled his arm away, it brushed against her breast, and a raw, hot sensation streaked through her body. For a moment, she thought she’d made a terrible mistake. Then Cole shifted over and lay beside her. He let out a long, relaxing breath, and then he was still.
A minute passed, maybe two. Then she heard his voice in the darkness.
“Say it again.”
She turned just enough that she could see the silhouette of his face in the moonlight. “What?”
“What you said to me at dinner tonight. About what happened at the bank.”
It took a moment for her to understand. “I appreciate what you did for me today,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Good night, Ginny.”
She smiled to herself. “Good night, Cole.”
After a few minutes the soft cadence of his breathing told her he’d fallen asleep. But Ginny was nowhere near sleep. Instead she lay wide awake, so aware of the man sleeping beside her that she swore she could feel every beat of his heart.
She slid her hand over her own heart. It was hammering in her chest like crazy. Is this how she was going to feel every night she went to bed with Cole? As if her heart were going to beat right out of her chest?
If so, the months ahead were going to feel like years.
9
“HEY, GINNY!” Rhonda said. “How’s that new husband of yours doing?”
Ginny stuffed a stack of twenties into her cash drawer with a silent sigh. Rhonda asked her that just about every day, and Ginny always answered with some bright little affirmative that made Rhonda smile real big and say something like, “Glad the honeymoon is still going strong,” or “It must be nice to sit out under the stars with your husband on that great big ranch,” or just, “I’m so glad you’re happy, sweetie—it’s about time.” But after several weeks, as much as she loved Rhonda, her comments were starting to wear on Ginny’s nerves.
“He’s doing okay,” Ginny said. “Staying busy on the ranch.”
“Keeping you busy, too, I’ll bet.” Rhonda winked, and Ginny smiled in return, when in reality she wanted to scream.
It wasn’t as if Cole was hard to live with. By the time July passed and August came, they’d settled into a comfortable routine. He appreciated her cooking and said so all the time. He respected her privacy as much as one person could, given the size of the space they were occupying, no matter what he’d said about how impossible it was going to be. And it was nice to sit around in the evening with him watching television, because it turned out both of them loved historical documentaries and sitcoms and hated reality TV and obnoxious talk shows.
Since they’d moved in, Cole had fixed the bathroom plumbing and patched the leaking roof to keep the place livable, while Ginny had planted pink petunias along the front porch and hung a wreath on the door to try to make it at least a little more homey.
And whenever they left the ranch to go into town, Cole was very attentive to her, playing the part of a newlywed husband and doing so convincingly. Even when they got the strangest stares from the townspeople, Cole pretended he didn’t see a thing, and not long after, she found herself doing the same. And soon, to her surprise, people stopped staring. Ginny was sure they were still talking behind their backs, but they did stop staring.
The days were okay. It was the nights that were driving her crazy.
Every night when Cole shut off the lamp and lay on his pillow beside her, Ginny’s heart did a little flip-flop. Even though he’d kept his promise and things had stayed platonic between them, she found herself thinking constantly about the way he’d kissed her and what it might be like if he did it again. And just as quickly as the thought would cross her mind, she’d try to chase it away, because after all this time, she still couldn’t get her mother’s loud, condemning voice out of her mind.
Every shift of Cole’s body on the mattress would spur one fantasy or another, and a little twinge of guilt would race through her. Then she’d get angry at herself for feeling guilty. Then she’d get angry at her mother for making her feel that way. And then she’d chastise herself for her anger, and the guilt would set in all over again.
“Cole?” she said one night after the lights were out.
He stirred, then turned to look at her. “Yes?”
“Do you think it’s possible to love somebody and hate them all at the same time?”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to yank them back. What would Cole—what would anybody—think of such a question? But then she heard his voice, calm and even, without a hint of a judgmental tone.
“I don’t know. Who did you have in mind?”
She paused a long time, then whispered, “My mother.”
There was a silence. He probably thought she was crazy. Maybe she was crazy.
Cole shifted to face her. “I’m not really all that tired. Why don’t you tell me about her?”
Ginny had never said a derogatory word to anyone about her mother—ever—so right now she felt as if she were on the verge of committing a mortal sin.
“She was my mother, and I loved her, but…” She exhaled, closing her eyes, not really sure how to put it into words.
“Tell me what she was like,” Cole said.
“Intense,” Ginny said, staring at the ceiling, “and very dictatorial. She quoted the Bible a lot, even though we never went to church. She thought most everything was a sin.”
She glanced at Cole. He simply stared at her, waiting for her to continue.
“When I was growing up, she found fault with any friend I ever had. The few times I got up the nerve to invite other kids over, she treated them so rudely that they never came back. Pretty soon I quit trying. She wouldn’t let me dress like the other girls, or wear makeup, or even cut my hair.”
“So the other kids made fun of you?”
“Most of the time it didn’t even go that far. At least then they would have been acknowledging me. When they looked at me, it was as if they didn’t see me at all. I was just a nobody. That was fine with my mother, because she thought the whole rest of the world was sinful, and it was probably best if I didn’t associate with them anyway.”
“You were lonely, then.”
Ginny’s stomach twisted at the memory. She thought about all those endless days of being ignored and of all the time she’d spent alone in her bedroom with the same dreams as every other little girl, only she’d had absolutely no way of realizing them.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Where was your father?”
“I never knew him. My mother did—for one night. And then he disappeared. I think she resented me as much as she resented him because I reminded her every day of the mistake she’d made in trusting him.”
“But later you still lived with your mother, even though you were an adult?”
“She was sick. She needed
me.”
“What was the matter with her?”
Ginny shrugged. “I don’t know. This and that.”
“So nothing in particular and everything in general.”
That was it exactly. Ginny had never known for sure what was wrong with her mother because her mother never went to a doctor, but still she was in bed most of the time and wanted her daughter to wait on her hand and foot.
“How did she die?” Cole asked.
“A sudden heart attack.”
“So nothing really related to her aches and pains.”
“I don’t think so. Not really.”
“So how did you feel when she was gone?”
Ginny’s throat tightened. She couldn’t say it. Those few words that were jammed inside her mind just wouldn’t come out, because she knew if she spoke them, something terrible was sure to befall her.
“You felt relieved,” Cole said.
She stared at him in disbelief. The very words she couldn’t say herself had just come out of his mouth.
“No,” she said quickly. “Not relieved. Not exactly. I—”
“Ginny,” he said gently. “You were twenty-four years old, and suddenly you had a life of your own. It’s not your fault that it took your mother’s death to finally let you experience that. And I don’t think you really hated her. You just didn’t know how to deal with her, and that’s nothing to feel guilty about.”
Ginny stared into the darkness. “But she talks to me inside my head, Cole. She’s still telling me every move I make is a sin, and it’s so hard to ignore it. I hear it all the time, day in and day out, until I want to scream.”
“So why don’t you just tell her to shut up?”
Ginny whipped around to stare at Cole. “What?”
“Tell her to shut up. God, Ginny, she’s yelling at you from beyond the grave. It’s not like she’s going to be able to back up whatever she yells at you about.”
Ginny blinked with total disbelief.
“You’re a rational adult. You know now that your mother had a lot of problems. She had problems. You didn’t. And if you keep listening to her, you’ll never have a life of your own.”
She stared at him, overcome with the oddest feeling. It was as if the hazy, hard-to-understand things about her mother were suddenly coming into sharp focus.
She had a lot of problems.
That was an understatement.
Keep listening to her, and you’ll never have a life.
And Ginny wanted a life. Desperately.
“So the next time you pick up that phone inside your head and it’s her,” Cole said, “just hang up.”
Ginny was astonished. Just hang up?
“It’s as simple as that?” she asked.
“No. Not really. But it’s a start.”
He’d stated the truth so simply that for the first time her guilt seemed to fade into the background and her mother’s voice was almost impossible to hear.
“For the record, Ginny, you’re not alone with the love-hate thing. I felt the same way about my father.”
As soon as he said the words, he rolled over, his back to her, and was silent. Ginny wanted to ask a hundred questions about that, but he was clearly telling her that now wasn’t the time.
Long after she knew Cole was asleep, she still lay awake. She couldn’t deny the attraction she felt to him, and it was growing by the day. It had been much easier to keep him at arm’s length in the beginning, but the more she got to know him, the more she was drawn to him. She was starting to see that his reputation didn’t begin to indicate the kind of person he really was any more than hers did. And he understood about her mother. Really understood.
And she had the feeling there was a lot about him that needed understanding, too.
ONE SEPTEMBER EVENING a few weeks later, Ginny sat on the back porch sipping a cup of herbal tea. An unexpectedly cool breeze tossed her hair, and she wondered how long it would be before the shorter days would make the trees start to turn. Soon the ranch would come alive with blazing autumn colors, and she couldn’t wait to see that.
She hadn’t seen Cole yet this evening. He’d told her that he was meeting a man in town to discuss some business and he might not be home for dinner. He didn’t bother to share with her the nature of his business, and she didn’t ask. Still, she’d heard him talking on the phone a couple of times in the past few days, and just the bits and pieces she’d overheard told her it had something to do with a commercial real-estate project.
He was planning ahead already.
She started thinking about how much money the ranch would bring when Cole eventually sold it. Since he was willing to give her twenty-five thousand dollars, it had to be worth far, far more than that. It was twelve hundred acres, and with that beautiful ranch house and a spectacular stable, it had to be worth quite a lot of money. And according to Cole, his grandmother had raised some of the finest quarter horses in the country, and they were obviously valuable, too.
Ginny looked down the road to the barn in the distance, settling her gaze on the horses milling around in the corrals behind it. She’d resisted the urge to go see them up close because even though she was drawn to horses, she was a little scared of them, too. Cole had told her it might be okay to ride one sometime, but since he was always so tired when he came in at night she didn’t want to ask him to go down there. And she certainly couldn’t ride one by herself.
Maybe she could just go down there and look at them.
After arguing with herself for a few more minutes, she finally went into the house. She put on her jeans, thinking she ought to dress for the occasion, then walked down the gravel road to the barn. Peeking inside, she saw a double row of horse stalls with a hay-filled loft over them, and her nose was assaulted by the scent of hay and grain and the strong but not unpleasant smell of horses.
She walked to the first stall and saw a big, shiny red horse with black legs and a black mane and tail. There was a white stripe down its face, and its right hind leg was white about halfway up to its knee.
She slid her hand over the stall door and made a little clucking noise with her tongue. The horse’s ears perked up, then it walked over slowly and stretched its neck out to sniff Ginny’s hand. The feel of the horse’s warm breath and the whiskers brushing against her palm sent tingles racing up her arm.
Then Ginny heard footsteps. She whipped around to see Murphy approaching, and immediately she yanked her hand out of the stall. She’d had very little contact with him since she’d come here, but given the way he glared at Cole anytime he saw him, he clearly wasn’t going to think much of having her around, either.
“I was just petting her,” Ginny said quickly. “But if you don’t want me to—”
“Petting’s fine,” Murphy said, stopping beside her. “As long as you’re out here and she’s in there.”
“Is she…dangerous?”
His lip quirked. “Nah. Not this one. But she’s just awful big, and you’re awful little. All she’d have to do is step on your toes and you’d be pretty sorry.”
“She’s so beautiful,” Ginny said.
“She was a champion in her day. She’s getting on in years now.”
Ginny brushed a fly off the mare’s neck. “I’ve always loved horses.”
“You ever ride before?” Murphy asked.
“No, but I’d like to.” She stole a glance at him. “Is it hard?”
“Depends on the horse.”
Ginny nodded. “Would this one be hard to ride?”
“Nah. A five-year-old could ride her.”
She patted the horse’s nose. “What’s her name?”
“Well, she’s got a big old long registered name, but we just call her Sunday.”
“Was she born on a Sunday?”
“Yep. One minute after midnight. Edna looked at her watch and said, ‘It’s Sunday,’ and it kind of stuck.”
Ginny smiled. “So you were there?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen most
of them born on this ranch for the past twenty years.” Murphy scratched the mare’s neck. “Why don’t we saddle her up so you can ride?”
Ginny felt a surge of excitement. “Really? Could I?”
Murphy went into a room in the barn and brought out a saddle and bridle. After saddling the horse, he led her to the arena adjoining the barn and showed Ginny how to mount. After three tries, she finally managed to pull herself up. She swung her leg over the mare’s back and plopped down in the saddle. Murphy adjusted the stirrups, then handed her the reins. He showed her how to hold them and how to do something called neck reining.
Pretty soon she was walking Sunday around the rail of the arena, her stomach fluttering with exhilaration. Murphy called out commands, telling her to keep her heels down in the stirrups and to take up some of the slack in the reins. Doing everything all at once wasn’t easy, but Sunday didn’t seem to mind when she pulled the reins funny or sat crooked. It was all pretty confusing at first, but after a few minutes she felt comfortable enough to take Murphy’s advice and bump her heels against the horse and nudge her into a trot. She found that to be a whole lot more uncomfortable than walking, but as long as she held on to the saddle horn she didn’t feel as if she was going to fall. Murphy said that pretty soon she’d learn to move with the horse instead of against her.
After she finished her first riding lesson and Murphy unsaddled the horse, he gave Ginny a brush and showed her how to use it, telling her to be careful not to brush too hard on the mare’s flanks or legs. Then he handed her a comb and pointed to the mare’s tail.
“Stand to one side,” he told her. “Even though Sunday won’t kick, some other horse might, so you’d better get used to doing it right.”
“Like this?” she said.
“Yeah.” Murphy took the brush and rubbed it over the mare’s back. “How much did Cole offer you to play his wife for six months?”
Ginny turned, startled, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Uh, nothing. I—I just…”
Her voice trailed off. She wanted to lie, tried to lie, but Murphy’s sharp, blue-eyed gaze was boring right into her.
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