More curse words slipped past his lips and Vanessa shook her head. “It’s a good thing the twins aren’t old enough to hear you, otherwise I’d have to cover their ears.”
“Hearing me cuss—you think that’s bad?” He snorted. “Not near as bad as you explaining to them why Conall won’t be their daddy.”
Vanessa sat back down and positioned her son against her shoulder. As she patted Rick’s back, she asked, “Just why do you think I’m not…marrying Conall?”
“Because he can’t give you any more babies. The twins aren’t enough for you, I guess.”
Vanessa had thought she couldn’t hurt any more than she had these past two weeks, but she was wrong. Her father’s impression of her had always been important to her. Ever since she was a tiny girl, she’d wanted him to admire her, be proud of her. When she disappointed him it cut something deep inside her.
Trying to swallow away the tears burning her throat, she said, “You have this all wrong, Dad. I’m not marrying Conall because he’s sterile! Even if I didn’t have the twins, that wouldn’t matter to me. It’s because he doesn’t love me—he was using me to become a father. That’s all!”
Alonzo sadly shook his head at her. “I hope to God your mama is not hearing you. Tears would be in her eyes.”
“I guess as a daughter I’ve been a disappointment to you both,” Vanessa said flatly. “But can’t you see, Dad? I made a bad mistake with Jeff. I don’t want to repeat it with Conall. I—” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand. “I just can’t go through that sort of pain again.”
“You think Conall only wanted the twins? I thought you were smarter than that, my daughter. Conall isn’t ugly or stupid or poor. There’re plenty of single women around that need a daddy for their children. You aren’t the only one. Wonder why he isn’t proposing marriage to them?”
“Probably because he hasn’t gotten off the ranch to meet any of them yet,” Vanessa retorted.
Alonzo snorted. “And what about all those orphanages with babies that need a home? If all he wanted was to be a daddy, he could do that without you. He asked you to marry him because he loves you. But you can’t see that. All you can see is Jeff. You’re still hung up on that sorry excuse for a man.”
Outraged, Vanessa shot straight to her feet. “That is not true! I love Conall! You know that!”
Nodding, Alonzo said, “I know it. But does Conall? Maybe you should be telling him instead of me.”
Vanessa sank weakly back into the chair. Her father was making sense, a lot more sense than she’d made this past couple of weeks. Which made her feel even more like a fool. But what could she do about it now? Conall appeared to have already washed his hands of her. “I’m not sure he’d want to hear it,” she mumbled uncertainly.
For the first time since he’d sat down at the table, Alonzo smiled. “It’d be worth a try.”
Easing Rick from her shoulder, she cradled the baby against her breasts and as she gazed down at her son’s tiny face, she knew she had to see Conall, she had to convince him that she loved him for the man he was and nothing else mattered.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, shortly after daylight, Conall broke from the normal routine of reading his messages and walked the quarter-mile distance to the training track. Now, as he stood next to his father at the pipe railing, he tried to focus his attention on one of the ranch’s most promising runners.
Like a gull skimming the ocean, the dark brown filly was moving smoothly over the track, floating as though she had wings on her hooves. Her neck was level and outstretched, her ears perked with reserve energy. On the last turn, she lay close to the rail and then sprinted down the homestretch.
“Look at that!” Doyle practically shouted. “Juan didn’t even have to ask her to change leads!” His father punched the button on the stopwatch before turning to look at Conall. “Kate’s Kitten is going to be a queen, boy! She’s not only fast, she’s smart. When was the last time we got a combination like that?”
“When Red Garland was born,” Conall was quick to answer.
Doyle stared at him with surprise and then he chuckled. “You got me there. But Kate’s Kitten is right behind her. We’re going to have two queens on our hands.”
A wan smile touched Conall’s lips. Even though the sight of the galloping filly had been beautiful, he couldn’t work up near the enthusiasm that his father was displaying. But then, there wasn’t much of anything that could lift his spirits these days. Not since he’d walked out of Vanessa’s house. He’d not looked back that day. But he’d not needed to look back to see that he’d left his heart in her hands.
Everything you’ve done and said was all for the babies! I was just a…side dish for you!
Even now, after nearly two weeks had passed, the accusation that Vanessa had flung at him still had the power to hurt. Unlike an aching tooth that could be pulled out and thrown away, the words continued to claw at him and he didn’t know what to do to dull the pain, much less make it go away.
“Liam will be thrilled to hear you say that about Kate’s Kitten,” Conall remarked. “And Grandmother will be happy to hear that her namesake has yet to disappoint.”
Doyle frowned at his eldest son. “Hell, Conall, you’re supposed to be thrilled, too. Instead you look like you did when you were a kid and I just ordered you to your bedroom to study for exams.”
Conall held back a weary groan. With Vanessa no longer sitting at her desk, nothing seemed the same, felt the same. He’d walked down here to the track this morning in hopes of giving his mind a short reprieve of her image, of the tortured thoughts he couldn’t cast away. But so far he’d not felt one moment of relief.
“Sorry, Dad. I am excited about Kate’s Kitten. It’s just that…I’ve had a lot of things on my mind here lately.”
Doyle stuffed the stopwatch in his shirt pocket as Conall absently watched the jockey jump to the ground and hand the filly’s reins to the waiting hot walker.
“Guess it doesn’t have anything to do with that little secretary of yours.”
Conall grimaced. “She was more than my secretary, Dad. She was the woman I was planning to marry. Now she…well, she’s not even my secretary anymore.”
The tall dark-haired man’s expression turned to one of concern as he eyed his son. “Hell, Conall, we all knew you were planning to marry Vanessa and we all know those plans went awry. But no one has mentioned anything to me about Vanessa quitting her job.”
Conall’s gaze dropped to the toes of his boots. “I haven’t exactly told anyone that Vanessa has quit. Since Mom is filling in at the office, I just explained to her that Vanessa was taking some time off, that’s all.”
“Instead, Vanessa quit. Is that it? Because you two can’t see eye-to-eye on your romance.” Squinting at a far off group of horse barns, he said in a gentler voice, “Well, that’s not surprising. When a woman gets angry she doesn’t want a man getting too close. If he does get near, she’ll raise her hackles and hiss. I can see where she wouldn’t want to be cooped up in an office with you.”
Conall wiped a hand over his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept the night through and his lack of rest was only compounding the mental agony he was going through. “She accused me of wanting to marry her just for the twins.”
Doyle sighed. “In case you didn’t know, your sister Maura is heartsick. She thinks she’s the cause of all of this.”
Shaking his head, Conall turned his gaze back on the exercise track. At the moment a chestnut colt was being trotted around the mile oval, but Conall wasn’t really seeing the beautiful Thoroughbred, he was seeing Vanessa’s face, the way she’d looked when he’d told her that he couldn’t have children. It was like he’d punched her in the stomach.
A grimace tightened his weary features. “Maura isn’t to blame for anything. I wasn’t planning to marry Vanessa without telling her about my condition. Maybe I should have done it sooner, but I kept thinking our relationship needed
to be more solid before I sprung something like that on her. Apparently there wasn’t anything solid about it,” he added bitterly.
Stepping closer, Doyle rested a comforting hand on Conall’s shoulder. “You think she turned her back on you because you can’t give her children, don’t you?”
Filled with agony, he looked at his father. “Oh, God, Dad, what hurts the most is that I really thought she was different. That she would accept me just the way I am. I don’t want to believe that she’s like Nancy or the others that backed away from me like I was a ruined man.”
“Conall, just because I’m your father doesn’t make me an expert on women. God knows I’ve only loved one all of my life and she’s more than enough to keep me confused. But from the little time I’ve been around her, Vanessa seems like a very sensible woman.”
Conall grunted. “What does that make me, an idiot?”
“Sort of.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Conall said with sarcasm. “That really makes me feel better.”
“Hell, son, I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m trying to help you fix things. Forget about Nancy and what came about with her. Forget about the other women that turned tail and ran. Nothing is going to be fixed with you and Vanessa until you first start accepting yourself. You need to realize that siring a child doesn’t necessarily make a man a man or a father a father. You’re much a man in my eyes, son. And I think you are in Vanessa’s, too. Don’t give up on her.”
Doyle gave him one final pat on the back, then strode off in the direction of Kate’s Kitten and the hot walker. Watching him go, Conall continued to lean against the white railing as his father’s words reverberated in his head.
Had he been too hard on himself all these years? God knows, he’d tried hard to live up to the role of being the eldest Donovan son. He’d tried his best to always be the strong one, the one who rarely, if ever, failed, the one who would leave an admirable pattern for his younger brothers to follow.
When he’d learned of his inability to have children, he’d felt like a total failure, like he’d let his family down in the worst kind of way. But in the tradition of his role, he’d glued on his iron-man image and pretended to his family and acquaintances that he was tough enough to swallow anything life handed him.
Scrubbing his face with one hand, he turned away from the track and lifted his gaze toward the far mountain range where Vanessa’s little house sat near a shrubby arroyo. It was no wonder, he thought, that Vanessa had struggled to believe that he truly loved her. For most of his adult life he’d been pretending, making an art out of hiding his feelings.
If he ever hoped to have another chance with her, he was going to have to go to her, open himself wide and hope that she could see what was truly inside of him.
His strides long and purposeful, he hurried back toward the office. If his mother had arrived to fill in at Vanessa’s desk, he would send her home and reroute all his calls to the ranch’s general office, he decided. If he hurried, he could drive over to Vanessa’s house in twenty minutes.
His thoughts were so caught up in his plans that when he arrived back at the block of offices, he didn’t notice the car parked next to his Ford truck at the side of the building. When he stepped inside, he glanced over, expecting to see his mother. Instead, Vanessa was sitting at the desk, sifting through a stack of correspondence as though she’d never been gone.
“Vanna!”
He didn’t know whether he’d shouted her name or whispered it. All he knew was that she looked like a beautiful dream come true and his boots couldn’t carry him across the room fast enough.
She looked up as he approached her desk and as their gazes met, her lips parted and he could see the movement of her throat as she swallowed.
“Hello, Conall.”
“Where is Mom?”
She tried to smile and he was amazed to see that she was pale and nervous. Didn’t she realize that she was holding all the cards, his very heart in her hands?
“When Fiona found me here, she went back home.” She placed the papers she’d been holding back on the desktop and then with her eyes still on his face, folded her hands together in a tight steeple. “Since you never formally fired me I was hoping you needed your secretary back.”
Amazed and shocked, he stared at her while his heart began to bump and thump with hope. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t want you here?”
Her head jerked back and forth. “I…didn’t know. You walked out and—”
“That was a stupid stunt on my part.”
Her eyes wide and hopeful, she rose to her feet. “You were hurt,” she said in a raw whisper. “And I should have never said those awful things to you.”
Fast as lightning, he streaked around the desk and tugged her into his arms. “Vanna! Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I’ve done everything wrong and—”
She placed a shushing finger against his lips. “So have I. Maybe we both have. But that doesn’t matter now. Does it?”
For an answer, his lips swooped down on hers. The sweet, familiar taste of her kiss was a soothing balm to his battered heart and it was a long, long time before he ever lifted his head.
“My darling, I…when I stepped through the door a few moments ago I was about to tell Mom to forget about working today. I’d already planned to drive over to see you—to see if you’d be willing to listen to me.”
“Listen? You don’t need to explain anything, Conall. I—”
Before she could finish, he grabbed her by the hand and led her into his office. After shutting the door behind them, he urged her over to the couch. After they were sitting, their knees together, hands clasped tightly, he said, “I need to explain a lot of things, Vanessa. I need to say them as much as you need to hear them.”
Nodding, she said, “All right. But first, I just want to say…I love you. That I never stopped loving you.”
His heart was so full he thought it would burst; he lifted a hand and reverently touched her cheek. “Vanessa, I was wrong in not telling you about my condition long before anything started to develop between us. But I guess it was something—well, I was trying to convince myself that with you it wouldn’t matter.”
Through a mist of watery tears, she smiled at him. “It doesn’t matter if we can’t have more children the conventional way,” she assured him. “I don’t care about that. I didn’t care the day you told me about it. I wanted to be the reason you wanted to marry me. Not the twins. That’s all. And I was quick to jump to the wrong conclusion. Because I guess I never believed I was good enough to deserve your love. I never could totally believe that you wanted me, needed me in that way.”
Amazed by her confession, he shook his head. “Oh, Vanna, that’s awful. How could you think such a thing? You’re the most precious woman I’ve ever known.”
Bending her head, she murmured, “Jeff squashed my ego, Conall. He never saw me as a wife that he loved and cherished. He saw me as a workhorse, a provider for him. And I could only think that you saw me as a way to have children—not as a wife.”
Sighing, he pushed his fingers gently into the rich brown hair at her temple. “And I thought you couldn’t love me because I was sterile.” His mouth twisting to a wry slant, he went on. “You see, when Nancy and I married, I had no idea that I was unable to father children. When we started trying to get pregnant and nothing happened, we both went through a battery of health tests. The minute the doctor gave us the news, something twisted inside of her, warped her into someone that I hardly recognized.”
Lifting her head, Vanessa searched his face. “Didn’t she stop to think that the two of you could adopt?”
Conall snorted. “She wouldn’t even consider the option. She wanted a baby of her own and she was determined to get one no matter what she had to do.”
Vanessa’s brows peaked with questions. “So what options did that leave?”
Fixing his gaze to a spot on the floor, he said, “She wanted to go to a fertility clinic and get impregnate
d by a donor.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I understand that’s a suitable solution for some childless couples. But at the time, the whole idea revolted me. I was young and full of masculine pride. I didn’t want to see my wife pregnant with another man’s child, much less have her giving birth to one. I tried to explain that it would leave me feeling as though I was on the outside of things. I argued that adoption would be a better option for the two of us. An adopted child wouldn’t be more hers than mine—it would be ours.”
“She couldn’t understand your feelings? Or she didn’t want to try?”
Dropping his hand from her hair, he released a long, heavy breath. “Nancy was a headstrong woman determined to have her way. She accused me of being selfish and robbing her of the right to be a mother. A ‘real’ mother in her terms.”
Sickened by what she was hearing, Vanessa laid her hand on Conall’s forearm. “So she didn’t believe an adopted child would be a ‘real’ child,” Vanessa mused out loud. “Well, I could tell her, or anyone, that the twins are just as much my children as if I’d given birth to them.”
As he turned his gaze back on her, a wan smile tilted his lips. “Yes. But you’re not Nancy. It took me a few horrendous days without you to figure that out.” He turned his gaze to the picture window framing the wall in front of his desk and this time when he spoke his voice was reflective and full of doubts. “I suppose I was equally responsible for the breakdown of our marriage. Perhaps I was selfish for not letting her have her way. Anyway, I’ve stopped trying to figure it out. We wanted different things and nothing could change the way each of us felt.”
Her fingers slid back and forth over the warm skin of his forearm as she searched for the right thing to say. “You both had different values and ideas about things. That never works—unless one of you sacrifices everything. And that wouldn’t have made you happy, would it?”
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