by Rachel Lee
Her father took a step forward, then halted abruptly as Cash’s mount moved toward him, clearly blocking him. “I don’t know what kind of lies she’s been telling you, but we want to take our daughter home. You have no business stopping us.”
Cash shifted in the saddle, looking at once relaxed and threatening. “Last time I heard, grown women make their own decisions. Whether she goes anywhere is up to her.”
“So you swallowed her lies!”
Cash tilted his head. “Her lies or lack of them have nothing to do with this. She makes her own decisions. That’s the beginning and end of it.”
Hope’s father looked past him at Hope. “You’re ruining me with your misbehavior.”
Hope felt her jaw drop. Pain and shock warred in her. Her heart galloped so fast she wondered if it would explode. “I thought I was saving you any more problems. I’m gone. There’s nothing for you to cover up now.”
Scott finally spoke. “You’re ruining him. Do you have any idea how much money your father borrowed from me?”
Another icy river of shock poured through her. Her dad was borrowing huge sums of money?
“You owe me,” Scott said. “You get rid of that baby so you can’t threaten my career or I’m going to see that your parents live on bread and milk.”
Oh, God. Hope suddenly felt sick enough to vomit. “I hate you,” she mumbled.
“I’m not real fond of you, either. I don’t want you back. I only wanted you in the first place because I thought you’d be the perfect wife for my career. But that kid will always be a threat to me.”
“No! I won’t tell anyone.”
“You already did. Anyway, as long as it’s around, you could ruin me with a paternity test. I’m not going to allow that.”
The threat acted on Hope like a tonic. All of a sudden, steel replaced the ice in her veins. She couldn’t believe she had ever been deluded enough to think she loved Scott, or that he could make her happy. He was simply an ugly, cruel, self-absorbed man. Anger began to replace shock. She stood up. “You don’t own me. I am not giving up this baby. I won’t get rid of it to protect your name. You’ll just have to trust me.”
“Trust you?” He sounded scornful. “You’ll be holding a sword over my head for the rest of my life.”
“Then live with it,” Hope said. “I’m through with you and everyone else dictating to me, and I’m not giving up this baby for anything. You might remember that I didn’t want to have sex with you. Not at all. If you hadn’t forced yourself on me, this wouldn’t have happened. So just live with it.”
She realized she was shaking, and she sat quickly on the chair for fear she might collapse. Standing up to them had become a pattern for her, but this was the hardest time ever. Her parents would be ruined? The guilt began to overwhelm her. Their entire lives revolved around being members of wealthy society. She doubted they could survive losing everything. Maybe she was being selfish beyond belief. But then she remembered her child.
“I’ll call their note,” Scott said.
“No, you won’t.” She sounded almost frail, but she reached for her strength, strength that had got her through all of this so far. Her voice steadied and grew firmer. “You won’t because if you do, I will tell everyone what you did. I will demand a paternity test. Here you are, Scott. Here’s your chance to buy your way out of this. I swear I’ll never come after you if you don’t hurt my parents.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because, unlike you, I have honor.”
Scott hesitated. At last he said, “One peep out of you and I’ll destroy them. I’ll destroy you, too, come to that. I’ll drag your reputation through the gutter.”
Then without another word he climbed back into the car. After a moment, Hope’s mother joined him. That left her father, who glared at her. “Don’t come home,” he said. “Don’t ever come back. I never want to set eyes on you again.”
He climbed in, slammed the car door and gunned the motor as he sped away.
Angie, Cash and Hope remained in frozen tableau until finally Hope’s anger and shock gave way to tears. It was over. Then why did it feel so bad?
* * *
No one said much for quite a while. They all moved inside. Cash seemed to think he needed to hang around rather than head back out to work, and even Angie appeared reluctant to disappear into her room, her favorite hidey-hole.
Hope curled on the sofa, Cash brought her tea, then they all just sat in silence. What could be said, anyway? Hope felt as if her heart had been shredded once more, but she refused to give in again to tears. They weren’t worth it, she told herself stoutly. Her father never wanted to set eyes on her again? After that, the feeling was definitely mutual.
She had thought the worst was over, at least with regard to her family and Scott, but she had been wrong. She couldn’t believe they had tried to force her to come back with financial threats.
“Sheesh,” Angie said, breaking the silence at last. “Money? What did they do? Auction you off?”
“It feels like it now,” Hope admitted. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that. You should have just come inside.”
“I’m glad I didn’t miss it. I need to know how messed up people can be, and that was messed up. Besides, that Scott guy is like Mom’s old boyfriend. It’s not like I’m innocent.”
That gained Cash’s immediate attention. “What the hell happened?”
Angie shrugged. “Oh, some guy tried some moves on me two years ago. Mom got a restraining order against him.”
Cash looked poleaxed. “Nobody told me.”
“What were you going to do about it? She did everything. I’m fine.”
“Fine? Are you sure?” He was half out of his chair. “I’ll kill him.”
“No need, he’s gone.” Angie shrugged again. “Really, I’m fine. My mother listened to me, unlike Hope’s. Can you believe those people?”
Cash shook his head slowly, clearly unwilling to change the subject, but evidently unsure whether to pursue what happened to Angie. “They do strain my credulity.”
“That means you can’t believe it, right?”
“Right.”
“Me, either. Hope, are you okay?”
“I will be.” At the moment she didn’t exactly feel like it, but she reminded herself she’d been through much worse. Today she had stood up for herself and her baby, and had won. “Thank you both for standing with me.”
“Like I was going to do anything else,” Angie said. “Or Dad for that matter. We take care of our own, don’t we, Dad?”
The most beautiful smile dawned on his face. “Yes, honey, we do. Thank you.”
Angie scowled and curled in on herself on the other end of the sofa. “That Scott guy was something else. The only thing he cares about is himself. I wanted to shoot him.”
Hope drew a breath. “I understand the feeling, but please tell me you wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t,” Angie said irritably. “Even if he deserves it. But I couldn’t believe him standing there demanding you get rid of your baby as if you owed it to him. As if whoever he is is more important. He’s an ugly man.”
“And you have a fine moral sense,” Cash remarked. “I’m proud of you.”
A small smile peeked out around Angie’s mouth. “I was proud of Hope. She stood there and told him she’d ruin him if he hurt her family. Like her parents deserved her protection.” Then she sighed. “I guess I can’t tell anyone about this, huh?”
Cash shook his head.
“Too bad. They’d love it. Oh, well.” She bounced up out of her seat. “I need a sandwich, then I’m going to do my homework. And no, I’m not going to call all my friends and tell them. I get it.”
In the silence after Angie dashed up the stairs with her sandwich, Hope said reluct
antly, “You need to get back to work.”
“I’m not leaving you alone. My men can handle the little that’s left to do today.” He moved over to sit right beside her on the couch.
“I’ll be fine,” she protested, even though she felt as if the whole thing was just beginning to hit her, even though she didn’t want Cash to leave her.
“I’m sure you will. Eventually.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and studied her. “I don’t even know how to express how appalled I am at what I saw, and I don’t even care about those people. You do, or did, and it had to have been a lot harder for you.”
“It was a shock,” she confessed. “I really didn’t think they’d follow me. Or even find me all the way out here.”
“I have to admit I’m surprised how quickly they did it. I guess I’ll never know how.”
“Me, either. I know your sheriff said they could still find me, but...” She shrugged. “I don’t get it. The FBI has a harder time finding wanted criminals.”
A short laugh escaped him. “True. But maybe you left a trail of bread crumbs.”
She thought that over. “Maybe I did, in a way. They canceled my credit cards when I was in Denver, but I still had the debit card from my bank account. I took the last money out of it just the day before you hired me. Near Casper, I think. So they could have gotten pretty close quickly.”
“And people around here inevitably talk. A new person would garner some interest.”
She nodded. “It was probably easier than I thought.”
“Evidently.”
She knotted her fingers together. “I’m so sorry, Cash.”
“For what?”
“All that ugliness. You and Angie having to see it. The invasion.”
The shame. The guilt. All of it was churning inside her, with no outlet, no way to quiet it. Realizing that she had not only been raised like a prize filly, but also evidently auctioned off like one.
“Maybe the money didn’t have anything to do with it, Hope.” He slipped an arm around her, hugging her.
But looking back, she was almost sure it did. She’d been paraded. She’d been nudged. She’d been practically thrown into Scott’s arms by her own parents, who kept telling her it was a perfect match. “I was an idiot,” she said. Her breaths speeded up. “I was living a delusion. He was Prince Charming. Everyone had me convinced it was a brilliant match, that I’d be so happy, that...” She trailed off and struggled to maintain control. “I should have noticed the change. Before that, they’d seemed primarily interested that I spend time with the right kind of people, date the right kind of men. They settled on Scott before I did. I was being maneuvered and didn’t even realize it. I thought it was that he was going to be a senator. It never occurred to me they might have other reasons.”
“Does the reason really matter? If you were guilty of anything it was being conned by everyone you trusted. I think most of us would fall for it.”
She lowered her head, almost afraid to look at him, so see his reaction. “I’m that plastic doll you called me. Just put me where you want me and tell me what to do.” The bitterness of the words shocked her. But as she looked back at how she had been nudged toward Scott, made to feel as if it would all be perfect for her with him, that she had an important and beautiful future awaiting her as a senator’s wife, she couldn’t deny that she’d been manipulated, and quite willingly. She had been bred to fulfill the dreams of others.
“What I said...” Cash spoke hesitantly. “I take it back.”
Startled, she lifted her head. “What? It’s true.”
“No, it’s not. I found the woman behind the facade the night before last. She’s real, passionate, warm and very much her own woman. She had the courage to run from everything she knew to protect her child. And today you were just magnificent. Magnificent.”
She shook her head a little. “I thought you were magnificent arriving like that on horseback, ready to protect me. Angie was magnificent. That daughter of yours takes after you, Cash. Very much so.”
He smiled, tilting his head. “She does seem to, doesn’t she? I was proud of her, too.”
“I am sorry she had to hear that ugliness, though.”
“She’s taking it in stride, as you noticed. Quite opinionated, too. But what was this about some guy her mother had to get a restraining order against?”
Hope’s heart sank yet again. Discomfort made her edge away a little. At once the arm around her loosened, but at least it didn’t go away. “She mentioned it to me briefly. I don’t know the details. I wanted to tell you, but she was so adamant about me not spying on her.” She closed her eyes momentarily. “It made me feel like hell not to say anything. But...what could you do at this point? If I’d told you and you’d said something to her, we’d have lost all trust around here.” She peeked at him nervously.
His face darkened briefly, but then he nodded. “I see your point. It’s okay. At least she mentioned it herself. I guess she’s the one I need to talk to about it.”
“Yes, she is.” Hope twisted, facing him at last, her courage fueled by his understanding. “She didn’t give me any real details. She seems most affected by the fact that her mother stepped in so quickly to protect her. And that all came out when I told her how I’d gotten pregnant.”
“She asked?”
“Yes. I kept it as sanitized as I could, but then she told me about what had happened to her. Just the bare outline, and she was gone.”
“She can be like that. Dropping a bomb then disappearing.” He sighed. “Thirteen-year-olds are fascinating creatures.”
He went to get her another cup of tea and suggested she eat something. She answered that she just wasn’t hungry, not now, and fresh tea would be great.
But alone in the room, she had more time to think. Time to think about what she’d seen today, a side of her father she had never imagined existed. He never wanted to set eyes on her again? She told herself she felt the same, but the truth was, that had pierced her heart. Through it all, even the ugliness before she fled, she had believed she and her father had had a special connection.
Apparently not. She wondered if she had been harboring some foolish notion that eventually she could return to her family, at least have some kind of relationship with them, once they realized she wasn’t going to embarrass Scott out of his political career. Now she knew otherwise.
She had failed them, failed at the one thing they had expected of her. Or maybe, to be honest, she had failed at everything they had expected of her. She wasn’t the Triple Crown winner they thought they had raised.
Then a shudder passed through her as she realized how close she had come. If Scott hadn’t raped her and made her pregnant, she’d be weeks away from marrying him. Weeks away from starting down a path that she now suspected would have been even harder to escape and probably would have made her very unhappy.
She hadn’t been measured for romance; she had been measured for a politician’s wife. Scott had only been pretending to love her, and she wondered if she would eventually have become one of those political wives standing by her man as he admitted to one of his indiscretions and claiming he had sorted out his priorities, never to slip again.
Hell, she couldn’t even be sure Scott had been faithful to her during their engagement. The doubts had occasionally plagued her, but she had swiftly buried them. She had no evidence, after all.
But she had wondered then, and she wondered now.
She could, she realized, get really hopping mad if she let herself.
But out of the blue, one thing struck her and struck her hard. When she had seen those people, people she had loved, she had felt as if she were looking at aliens from another world. She was no longer part of that, and she never wanted to be again. Strangers. They had become strangers.
> Probably because she had never really known them.
“Hope?” Cash stood beside the couch, putting down another cup of tea for her and a small piece of pastry. “You look like you got hit by a train. Again.”
“I feel like it,” she admitted.
He sat beside her. “What’s going on?”
“It just suddenly struck me that my family, Scott...they all come from another world. It was as if I was meeting them for the first time, and I just didn’t understand them. I also realized that I never want to go back to that. Ever.”
“You don’t miss any of it?”
“That’s the weird thing. I don’t. It’s as if I’ve moved to a whole new world here. I like it. I like being useful and doing useful things. I like helping Hattie, and spending time with Angie and you. I like all the stuff I’m learning around here. I’m sure I’m not much help to you, but I feel more helpful and useful than I ever have. I looked at them and I hardly recognized them.”
“That’s quite a shift.” Nonjudgmental, leaving it to her whether to say any more. Even his expression revealed nothing except a gentleness.
He was, she realized, an incredibly accepting man. “Maybe I’ve finally figured out what really matters.”
“And that is?”
“What you can do for others, however small. Money doesn’t matter, as long as you have the necessities. Beyond that...well, maybe it’s all about what you have to give.”
He nodded, remaining attentive, awaiting whatever she wanted to say.
“I thought I knew happiness,” she remarked. “I didn’t. I’ve found happiness here in such little things. Like teaching Angie about makeup. That was great. The sleepover was great, even if it wore me out. All of it matters more than a balance in a bank account.”
A smile slowly creased his face. “I agree. I’ll tell you I had some qualms when I first looked into your background. I couldn’t figure out how a Texas princess was going to fit in around here. But you have.”
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity you gave me. So grateful. I still have a lot to learn, but I never would have imagined I could feel such a sense of accomplishment from making my own bed.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Or mopping a floor. I can see the results of what I do, and I like it.”
