He didn’t go on to tell her that he’d been born into ranching, that his father had taught him all he knew about raising cattle and horses. Even his ability to become one of the best farriers in Lincoln County had come from Lee Rollins.
You’re like your daddy in every way, Jake. The good and the bad.
His mother had spoken those words to him more times than Jake could count. And he supposed Clara was right. He did take after Lee in plenty of ways. But Jake didn’t want to believe he was exactly the same man as his father. He didn’t want to think he was the sort of guy who could callously walk away from his own child, from the woman he’d sworn to love and cherish.
“And I’m sure you’re very good at what you do.”
Her reply broke into his roaming thoughts and he looked over just in time to see her cast him a furtive glance.
“I’d love to see the Rafter R sometime,” she quietly suggested. “Whenever you’re not too tied up with work.”
Did she really want to see his ranch or was she simply trying to be sociable because he’d gone out of his way to help her with Starr?
Jake quickly decided to keep the questions to himself. He didn’t want to take the chance of offending her. Especially if she really meant what she was saying.
“I’d be happy to drive you over to see it some evening,” he said. “Just don’t expect too much, though. I’ve only been working on the place for the past couple of years. It’s coming along. But it’s not quite where I want it to be yet.”
“So it wasn’t in tip-top condition when you purchased it?”
He grunted with amusement. “If it had been I could have never afforded it.”
Her smile was gentle. “Well, I’m sure I’ll be rightly impressed.”
Impressed? With him? What was wrong with this woman? Couldn’t she see he was just a regular Joe?
After that their conversation turned to less personal things. She asked him about the winters in Lincoln County and other local interests. As they talked and enjoyed the food, Jake tried to think of another time he’d had such an evening. But he couldn’t recall even one.
He’d never really had many meaningful conversations with women he dated. Not that Rebecca could be considered a date. But she was definitely a woman and they were alone together. If this evening wasn’t a date, it was pretty close to being one. Yet nothing about it felt like anything he’d experienced in the past. Most of those encounters had been spent throwing out sexual innuendos and nonsensical jokes, while subtly maneuvering his date to the bedroom. Getting to know his companion had never been important to Jake
So why did it seem important now?
“I’m so full I don’t think I can eat another bite,” Rebecca announced as she pushed back her plate. “Would you like something else? Dessert? I have chocolate cake that I purchased from a bakery in Ruidoso. I’ll make coffee to go with it.”
Jake wasn’t sure he could eat another bite either, but the cake and coffee would prolong the evening. And he wasn’t ready to leave. Not by a long shot.
“That sounds good,” he told her. “While you make the coffee, I’ll clear off the table.”
Rising to her feet, she looked at him with surprise. “That’s not necessary. I’ll deal with the mess later.”
Ignoring her, he got to his feet and reached for the dirty plates. “I insist,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”
As they moved around the kitchen, the close quarters caused their shoulders to inadvertently brush each other more than once. Each time it happened Jake warred with the idea of grabbing her and whirling her into his arms. If Rebecca had been any other woman, he would have already made his move and showed her just what her presence was doing to his libido.
But Rebecca wasn’t any woman and even though his body was yelling at him to shift to a faster gear, his mind was telling him he had to take things slowly. If he didn’t, he might scare her off and ruin the easy companionship that had developed between them.
When the coffee finally finished brewing, Rebecca filled two cups and placed a hefty serving of chocolate cake on a small plate.
“If you’d like, we could take our coffee and sit out on the back steps,” she suggested. “It’s much cooler than this kitchen.”
And much safer, she thought, as she poured a dollop of cream into her cup. From the moment they’d entered the house and sat down to supper, she’d felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. She’d hardly been able to keep her eyes off him. And the more she’d looked at him, the more her mind had wandered to things she had no business thinking. Like how it would be to kiss him, to have him hold her the way a man holds a woman whenever he wants her.
“I’m good with that,” he agreed.
Releasing an inaudible sigh, she called to Beau and the three of them passed through the door and onto the back porch.
“I apologize for not having a porch swing or lawn furniture,” she told him. “I couldn’t find any around the place and I’ve not taken the time to shop for much more than groceries and pet supplies.”
“The steps are fine,” he assured her. “I’m not used to doing a lot of chair sitting anyway. Most of my sitting is done in the saddle.”
He waited until she’d eased down on the top step before he joined her and as he stretched his long lean legs out in front of him, Rebecca immediately wondered if she’d made a mistake by leaving the kitchen. At least in there their chairs had been a respectable distance apart. Now that they were sitting side by side on the wooden step, there wasn’t a hand’s width of space between them.
What are you whining about, Rebecca? You’ve been itching to get close to the man. Now that you are, you want to run like a scared cat.
She wasn’t feeling scared, she mentally argued with the mocking voice in her head. She was only trying to be cautious. Jake was obviously a love ’em and leave ’em sort of guy. He’d never taken a wife, or as far as she knew a fiancée, but she’d be ready to bet he’d taken plenty of prisoners of the heart. Would she be willing to become one more?
Sipping her coffee, she tried not to sigh, to let him see that just sitting here close to him was shaking her like the winds of a hurricane. “I’m ashamed to admit that a lot of my work is done sitting behind a desk. I have so much reading to do, so many photos and catalogs to view, I don’t get to exercise as much as I’d like.”
“You look like you get plenty of exercise.”
She’d not been fishing for a compliment and the fact that he’d noticed such a personal thing about her sent a flash of pink color to her face.
“At the gym,” she explained. “I meant natural exercise.”
Between bites of cake, he glanced at her, his mouth curved in a suggestive grin. “What sort of exercise do you consider natural?”
She cleared her throat and wondered again why he made her feel so naive and inexperienced. She’d had plenty of boyfriends, even a few lovers. This one shouldn’t be causing a flash fire of heat to rush from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. This one shouldn’t be making her heart pitter-patter like those first few drops of rain right before a storm.
Dating had never been simple or easy for Rebecca. Losing her father had taught her that loving someone with all her heart also carried risks. And for a long time after she’d first started dating, she’d kept everything simple and platonic as a way to keep her emotions protected. But then, as she’d grown older, she’d realized if she never allowed a relationship to grow between herself and a man, she’d always be living alone. Unfortunately, each time she’d let a man into her life, he’d found a reason to leave. Now Jake was knocking on the door of her heart and, crazy or not, she was desperately wanting to open it up and let him in.
“I meant like…riding a horse.”
“Oh. So tell me, Rebecca, back in Houston what did you do for play?”
The question brought her up short and for long moments her mind was stuttering, searching wildly back through her regular routine. To
her dismay, the days and nights of the past few years were mostly an uneventful blur of work and travel, exhaustion and sleep.
“Well—I go to the movies,” she finally said. She didn’t add that the outing was mostly a form of work, a chance to see what types of fashions were being worn on the big screen and how the more popular movies would influence the next round of designs to be introduced to the buying public.
“Is that it?”
She thought for another long moment. “I like going to the beach down at Galveston—whenever I get the chance. But that’s not often.”
His gaze slipped over her face and she could feel her lips tingling, burning beneath his lazy inspection.
“No dining, dancing?”
She looked away from him to focus her gaze on the open field sweeping away to the left of the property. Twilight had fallen and in the gloaming she could see a pair of nighthawks circling over the desert brush. As she watched the birds dip and dive for insects, she wondered how Jake’s simple questions could make her see herself more plainly than looking at her image in the mirror.
“On occasions. I stay very busy with my work, you see.”
“Yes. I am beginning to see,” he replied.
He placed his plate and cup aside, then reached for her hand. Rebecca tried not to outwardly shiver as the pads of his fingers slid gently back and forth over the top.
“And I’m thinking it’s a good thing that you decided to stay on here for a while. For me, ’cause I like your company. And for you, ’cause I get the feeling that you needed some time away.”
Her throat was suddenly thick and she tried to swallow the sensation away. “I hadn’t planned on staying. Not at first. But I—well, I decided that my aunt deserved a little of my time. God knows she didn’t have any of it while she was alive. And now—well, everything she had in her life, she left to me. It’s—”
She was suddenly too choked to speak and she looked down at her feet as she tried to regain her composure. Finally, she spoke in a broken voice. “It’s hard for me to bear, Jake. I don’t deserve anything from her. None of it.”
“Rebecca, why would you say such a thing?”
“Because I never visited her. Never spoke to her.” She looked at him, her expression full of despair. “Jake, this is going to sound crazy, but I never even knew I had an aunt! I didn’t find out about Gertrude until a few days before her funeral.”
Clearly stunned by her admission, he stared at her. Then finally, he said, “I understood that you’d never been out here to visit. But I thought—well, sometimes people have good intentions that never come through and I figured you were busy with your own life.”
Her head swung shamefully back and forth. “I wish it were that simple. But it’s not. My family—everything feels like a lie—a sham!”
“Whoa now, Rebecca. That’s a pretty harsh way of putting things. Maybe you ought to back up and explain from the beginning,” he gently suggested.
Realizing half of what she’d just said probably hadn’t made sense to him, she nodded. “You’re right. I should start at the beginning. So I’ll begin by saying that I’ve always been from a small family. I never knew my maternal grandparents. My mother had been born to them in their latter years. By the time she’d grown to adult-hood they were both suffering from age-related health problems. They passed away before I was born.”
“What about your paternal grandparents?” he asked.
“During the time I was a very young child they lived in Florida and came for short visits. But a few years before my father lost his life, they were killed in an automobile accident.”
“That’s hard,” he said softly.
Her lips took on a wry slant. “That’s life. At least, that’s the way it is in mine.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out in a heavy rush. “So neither of my parents had siblings. Or that’s what I was led to believe. So I had no aunts or uncles or cousins. For most of my life it’s just been my mother and me.”
His forehead puckered in a frown, he squared around to face her. “How did you find out about Gertrude?”
“A lawyer from Ruidoso called me at the department store where I work. He explained that Gertrude had left strict instructions to notify me of her death, but not before. And that all of her belongings, including the land and mineral rights, go to me.”
As she talked he rested their entwined hands upon his knee and Rebecca was amazed at how one minute his touch could be so exciting and the next comfort her like nothing had before.
“Dear God, that must have been a wham in the gut.”
She sighed. “At first I thought someone was playing a tasteless joke. I even argued with the lawyer and told him that I ought to know my own family.” The faint noise she made in her throat was something between a self-mocking groan and a sob. “Can you imagine how I felt when I learned that I didn’t know my own family? Initially I was in denial. Then when I realized he was serious, I was stunned and embarrassed.”
He stared thoughtfully out to the stand of aspens and the barn partially hidden by their branches. “I can’t imagine what any of it must have felt like. You learn you have an aunt at the same time you learn that she’s already died.” He focused his gaze back on her face. “How did all this happen, Rebecca?”
Shaking her head with defeat, she tried to keep her emotions in check. Yet her voice quivered when she finally answered, “I don’t yet know, Jake. I’ve asked my mother to explain, but she’s told me very little. She and Gertrude were twins. But at some point, after they became adults, they parted ways and lived totally separate lives.”
“And she hasn’t explained why?”
The dismay in his voice matched the disbelief she was still feeling. After years of believing her mother was a morally upright person, she now had to face the fact that Gwyn was deceptive. Not only deceptive, but unfeeling along with it.
“The only thing she says is that they were entirely different people and they simply chose to live different lives.”
“Do you believe that’s all there was to it?”
Rebecca let out an unladylike snort. “Of course I don’t believe it! If it was all that simple, there would have been no need for my mother to keep Gertrude a secret from me.”
“Hmm. Maybe she thought the woman would be a bad influence on you and didn’t want you to be acquainted with her.”
“Jake! Gertrude was the only other blood connection I could possibly have for most of my life. Even if she had been a bad person, that didn’t give my mother the right to keep her existence from me! Every family has a misfit or two, but that doesn’t make them any less a relative. Besides, I don’t believe Gertrude was a bad person. Do you?”
He appeared surprised that she’d asked him such a thing.
“Why, no. I don’t,” he answered. “How could she have been bad? She kept to herself and as far as I know never caused anyone a problem. Did your mother try to paint her sister as a bad person?”
Rebecca grimaced. “Not really. She refused to say much at all. And that infuriates me. I can hardly bring myself to speak to my mother. Most days I don’t bother answering her calls. It’s always the same. Begging me to come home, but refusing to explain anything.”
His hold tightened slightly on her hand. “The Cantrells noticed you were the only relative attending Gertie’s funeral. They wondered why and frankly I did, too,” he admitted. “Your mother didn’t want to see her own sister laid to rest?”
Anger, frustration and an enormous sense of loss swept over Rebecca and for a moment she closed her eyes. “Mother refused to come out here. Said she wanted to remember Gertrude in her own way.” Opening her eyes, she looked at him with all the pain and betrayal she was feeling. “I’m ashamed to tell you this, Jake, but I honestly believe the death of a stranger living down the street would have affected her more. She doesn’t want to remember her sister in any way. Much less talk about her.”
His head swung back and forth in contemplation. “You being her
daughter, I’m sure you know more about that than anyone else. What I’m wondering is why Gertrude never tried to contact you. You say she told the lawyer not to contact you before her death, only afterward?”
Rebecca nodded, then stared at him as her thoughts took his direction. “That’s right. And I’ve been so busy wondering about my mother’s motives, that I’ve not stopped to think about Gertrude’s. Why didn’t she try to contact me? Why did she live here in New Mexico, when I know for certain that my mother was born and raised in Houston? So that means Gertrude once lived there, too.” Wiping a hand over her face, she said in a strained voice, “Oh, Jake, maybe my aunt didn’t want to know me. After all, she knew where I lived—where I worked. I can only believe that she wasn’t that interested in spending time with her niece.”
His expression full of empathy, he curled his arm around her shoulder and snuggled her close to his side. “Rebecca, you’re agonizing over things that might not even be true. I didn’t know Gertie, but I can’t imagine her keeping you out of her life on purpose.”
It felt wonderful to have his strong shoulder supporting her, to have the heat of his body seeping into hers, warming the empty chill inside her.
“You’re just being kind, Jake.”
“I’m being sensible.”
She sighed. “I’m afraid I’ll never get the answers I need to know about my aunt—my family.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, so long in fact that Rebecca finally tipped her head back to glance up at him. She barely had time to catch the faint smile on his face when he tucked her head beneath his chin.
“Don’t feel badly, Rebecca. I’ve wanted answers about my own family for years.”
As he stroked fingers through her hair, Rebecca realized she was probably allowing herself to get too close to the man. She also realized she couldn’t resist him. At this moment, she didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to break the sweetness of his touch.
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