“Make up! Like hell!” he sputtered forcefully. “I’ll never trust another woman as long as I live. I’ll never touch another woman as long as I live. And that includes Katherine!”
She cast him a withering look. “I’m very disappointed in you, Blake. And troubled. Why are you sitting around, letting your best chance at happiness slip away?”
He tossed up his hands in a helpless gesture. “Slip away? Mom, in case you didn’t know, I asked Katherine to marry me and she turned me down flat. There’s no point in begging or pursuing. She doesn’t love me. Or if she does, it’s not enough. She and I are over. Done.”
Her expression softened. “You’re letting your ego blind you.”
“Am I supposed to grovel? Is that what it takes to get a wife? If so, then I don’t want one. A man has his pride, you know. And if he doesn’t have that...well, he’s pretty damn worthless.”
“Looks to me like you’re feeling pretty damn worthless right now,” she retorted. “And groveling isn’t what you need to be doing. Instead, you should be finding out why she turned you down and go about fixing the problem.”
“I just told you. She doesn’t love me.”
“Baloney. You can’t convince me of that. Kat is crazy about you. There’s something else going on with her and I think I might know what it is.”
Blake stared moodily at his mother while silently yelling at himself that he didn’t want to know what Katherine’s problem might be. She’d kicked him and stabbed him and cracked his heart right down the middle. The farther away he could stay from her, the better off he’d be.
Except that he was still crazy in love with her, Blake thought. He still ached to hold her in his arms. To make love to her until there was no breath left in his body.
Maureen thoughtfully sipped her coffee, then asked, “Do you want to hear my theory? Or is hanging on to your precious pride more important?”
Frustration pushed a groan past his throat. “Mom, don’t you think I’ve been asking myself over and over where I failed?” He shook his head. “At first I thought it was the same as Lenore. That she was afraid my job as ranch manager would take time away from her and Nick. But now...I’m not sure. I was so angry and hurt I couldn’t see straight. Much less figure out what was going on in her head.”
She placed the coffee mug on the corner of his desk. “You’re still so hurt and angry you’re not seeing straight,” she told him. “Otherwise, you would’ve already figured out that Katherine is afraid.”
His jaw dropped. “Afraid? Of me? That makes no sense at all.”
Pushing the coffee mug aside, Maureen eased her hip onto the corner of the desk. “I don’t know how much she’s talked to you about her father, but I know for a fact that he was an abusive man whenever he was drunk. Which was quite often. That’s why Paulette moved Katherine and Aaron to California. To get away from him.”
A sick feeling swam in Blake’s stomach. “Katherine has talked a little about her father’s drinking. I figured at the most he was a neglectful father and husband, but abusive—no. Kat never said that about Avery. She came back to care for him before he died.”
“Because her heart is as big as her head. Because she’s a forgiving, compassionate woman. I’m not sure I could’ve ever done what she did for her father.”
And she’d paid dearly for it, Blake thought grimly. Her mother and her brother regarded her as a traitor and had basically pushed Katherine out of their lives. Thoughtful now, he said, “Even if you’re right, Katherine can’t be thinking I’d ever be like Avery Anderson.”
“Or her late husband?”
His head snapped back. “What does Kat’s late husband have to do with anything?”
Maureen sighed. “When a woman gets to be my age, son, she can sense things. Especially about another woman. I’m a widow and so is she. But we’re not the same sort of widows.”
“You’ll have to explain that one, Mom.”
“Okay. It’s damn obvious to me that Kat’s marriage was not good,” she said bluntly.
The cogs in his mind were suddenly turning faster and faster. “I think you’re right about that. From what little she’s told me about her marriage, it wasn’t all that grand. I think he neglected her and Nick.”
Maureen nodded. “Get my point now? She grew up in a troubled family and then her marriage ends up being troubled, too. The woman can’t imagine herself in a happy home. She doesn’t believe it’s meant for her to be a part of a real family. It’s going to be up to you to convince her that she’s worthy of your love.”
“I’ve been trying for weeks to show her what she means to me. How am I supposed to convince her?”
Smiling smugly, Maureen slipped off the desk and started toward the door. “You’re a smart man, Blake. You’ll figure it out.”
* * *
A short while later in town, Katherine and Prudence sat at one of the little round tables outside Conchita’s and sipped at the fresh brewed coffee Emily-Ann had prepared for them.
“Eat your apple fritter,” Prudence ordered. “You need it. You look like you’ve lost ten pounds or more.”
Katherine rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what we’re doing here. It’s only an hour or so to lunch. Eating a fritter now will ruin my appetite.”
Prudence’s short yelp was closer to a snort than a laugh. “Oh, please, who are you kidding? You don’t have an appetite to ruin.”
Reluctantly, Katherine pinched off a corner of the pastry and placed it in her mouth. Normally, she would have savored every succulent bite of the sweet concoction. Now the taste very nearly sickened her.
“Okay, so I don’t want to eat. The problem will pass.”
“Problem? Are you talking about your lack of appetite? Or Blake Hollister?”
Everything inside Katherine wilted. “Please don’t mention his name. And if you dragged me over here to Conchita’s just to get me out of the office to talk about...him, then we need to end this coffee break right now and go back to school.”
Prudence glared at her. “Look, I have a stack of work on my desk that I need to be attending to right this minute. But I care about you and I thought getting you out for a talk might help.”
Bending her head in shame, Katherine pressed a hand to her aching forehead. “I’m sorry, Pru. You’re my friend and I’m grateful that you care—that you want to help. But there’s nothing you can do. And being here at Conchita’s is... Well, this is where Blake and I came that first day we ran into each other.”
“Oh. You should’ve told me,” she said contritely, then quickly followed that up with a shake of her head. “No. Maybe it’s good that you’re being reminded of all you’re throwing away.”
“Throwing away? Pru, I’ve tried to explain. I turned down Blake’s proposal because I thought it was the best thing for him—and everybody involved.”
Prudence was not only unconvinced, but she was also downright angry. “Really? Best for you? For little Nick? You’ve squashed every bit of hope that boy had—simply because you’re a coward!”
Katherine gasped. “Pru! How can you be so heartless?”
“You think telling the truth is heartless? I think sitting around and allowing a friend to ruin her life would be far crueler.”
Feeling totally defeated, Katherine slumped back in her chair. Coward. Scared. Worthless. When Blake had asked her to marry him, she’d felt all those things and more. Now, after thinking about it for several days, she’d come to the conclusion that she was a failure as a woman.
“You’re right,” she mumbled. “I am a coward. To think about making a man like Blake happy, not for just a few weeks or months, but for a lifetime—it’s scary, Pru. When it comes to the men in my life, it’s not been good. My father, I couldn’t pick. But Cliff was different. I did pick him and ended up making him miserable. And now my brother hardly speaks to me.”
>
“Cliff made himself miserable. And your brother is the one losing out. Not you,” Prudence argued.
“No matter. It’s obvious my relationships with men, relatives or otherwise, always end up lacking. And I don’t want Blake to be another casualty of my failures. I love him too much for that.”
“Maybe that’s something you ought to tell him,” Prudence suggested.
Katherine closed her eyes as a chunk of pain settled in the middle of her chest. “Yes, maybe I should. I’ll talk to him...soon.”
“No. You’ll talk to him now. Like, right now.”
Katherine opened her eyes to see Prudence staring out toward the tiny parking area in front of the coffee shop.
Her heart beating wildly, Katherine turned in her chair to see a cowboy in a black hat and dressed all in denim striding toward them.
Blake! The sight of him was like a ray of sun after a violent storm.
“Oh.”
The one word rushed out of her at the same time Prudence was jumping to her feet.
“I’ll see you back at school. Later,” Prudence said under her breath. “Much later!”
The other woman hurried away, acknowledging Blake with a nod as she passed him on the walkway.
Even though her heart was yelling at her to run straight into his arms, Katherine remained glued to her seat and waited for him to reach the table.
“Hello, Katherine. Mind if I sit down?”
A zillion questions raced through her mind as she gestured toward the chair Prudence had just vacated. What was he doing here? To ask her to return his ring? To talk about Nick?
“Just push Pru’s things out of the way,” she told him. “She, uh, had to rush back to work.”
A half grin touched his lips. “The minute she spotted me, I noticed.”
Katherine’s cheeks were suddenly stinging with color, and though she tried to smile back at him, her face felt frozen. “Did you come to town on business or just needed some of Emily-Ann’s coffee?”
“Not the kind of business you think,” he said. “I went by St. Francis to speak with you, but someone at the front entrance told me you’d left a few minutes ago with the superintendent. I just happened to be driving by Conchita’s and spotted the two of you sitting out here.”
He’d driven into Wickenburg to see her specifically? Oh, Lord, what did it mean?
Her heart was beating so fast she was finding it difficult to breathe. “Pru thought we both needed a little break.”
The grin on his face deepened and Katherine desperately wanted to reach across the table and press her fingertip against the dimple in his cheek. Touching him had been a precious privilege. These past few days without him had taught her exactly how precious.
“Ironic, isn’t it? That I’d find you here,” he said. “Where we first had coffee together.”
As her gaze hungrily roamed over his dear, familiar face, a lump of painful tears collected in her throat. She tried to clear it away with a little cough.
“That seems like a very long time ago, Blake. So much has happened since that day we met. Again.”
Regret was etched upon his rugged features. “Yes. Everything in my life seems different now.”
Summoning all the courage she could find, she asked, “Why did you want to see me? To ask for your ring back? It’s at home. In a safe place. I realize it’s worth an enormous amount of money. And—”
All of a sudden he reached across the table and snatched up her hand. As his fingers squeezed around hers, she met his gaze and the beseeching look in his brown eyes turned her heart to pure liquid.
“I’m here to ask you to put the ring back on your finger, Kat. I’m asking you again to marry me.”
Even as she tried to tamp it down, hope surged through her. “Apparently these past few days haven’t given you enough time to think,” she said in an anguished voice. “I’m an Anderson, Blake. I’m not supposed to marry a Hollister or live in a home like Three Rivers. I’m not even sure that it’s meant for me to be...loved.”
“Oh, Kat, you’re so wrong. You are loved. By me. Always. I know you’re afraid. I understand the men in your life haven’t always been the kind you deserved. But—”
“No, wait, Blake. Before you go any further, I have to tell you about Cliff. He—”
“It doesn’t matter about Cliff. Nothing about that time in your life matters now. All I want to know is if you love me.”
By now tears were streaming down her face. “How could you ever doubt it? Of course I love you, Blake. With all my heart and soul. That’s why... I desperately want you to be happy. And you need to know that what happened with Cliff was all my fault. He died because of me. Because I told him I was going to divorce him.”
Unfazed by her admission, he said, “You didn’t make him go crash his car. He did that on his own. And I just thank God that you and Nick weren’t in the vehicle with him.”
She groaned with misgivings. “Yes, but I was the reason he got raving drunk and climbed behind the wheel. I must have been the reason he was miserable in the first place—the reason he found work more important than me or his baby.”
His eyes glowing with tender love, he touched her cheek. “Oh, Kat, a man’s happiness begins on the inside. He has to feel good about himself first, or no amount of love or adoration from a woman will make him feel good or right. Your late husband clearly had more problems than you could fix. That’s no reason you should blame yourself or suffer for the rest of your life.”
More tears oozed from her eyes, but this time they were tears of joy and relief.
“Oh, Blake, I’ve been such a coward. Such a fool. Are you sure you really want to marry me?”
Smiling, he picked up a napkin from the table and dabbed away the tears on her cheeks.
“Let’s go get your engagement ring. I want to slip it back on your finger. Where it belongs.”
Her heart bursting with joy, she smiled back at him. “And what are people going to say when they see that poor little Anderson girl wearing such a ring? That I latched on to you for your money?”
Rising from the chair, he pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “No, they’re all going to wonder how such a stuffed shirt managed to snare a beauty like you.”
She laughed. “Oh, Blake, we are going to be happy together. You and me and Nick and all the babies you want.”
“Damn right,” he murmured, then leaned over and fastened his lips over hers in a kiss to seal the deal.
Even though they were partially shielded from the street by the limbs of a mesquite tree and there was no one around but the two of them, they were still standing outside in the open for anyone to see. But that hardly seemed to matter to Blake.
He was still kissing her when a quiet little cough sounded from somewhere behind them. They pulled apart to see Emily-Ann standing a few feet away, and from the clever smile on her face, it was clear she’d already seen plenty.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I came out to ask if Blake wanted coffee. But I see he already has what he wants.”
Blake looked down at Katherine and the love she spotted in the depths of his brown eyes chased away all the hurt and loneliness of the past.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Everything I want is right here in my arms.”
Epilogue
Six months later, on a beautiful November day, Katherine was in the Three Rivers kitchen, helping Reeva, Maureen and Vivian prepare a massive Thanksgiving meal for the family. As she stuffed pieces of celery with pimento cheese, the back door suddenly opened, bringing with it a gust of cool wind.
From her spot at the cabinet counter, Katherine watched Blake enter the room with Hannah under one arm and Nick under the other. The broad smiles on the faces of her husband and son never failed to make Katherine’s heart swell with joy.
She and Blake had gotte
n married the last weekend in June at an outdoor ceremony here on Three Rivers. A huge reception had followed with tons of food and champagne, live music and dancing that had gone on long into the night. Their wedding had been like a fairy tale, and since then, Katherine sometimes had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t living a dream.
Three months ago, Blake had hired a secretary to help with the endless paperwork associated with the ranch. At first, he’d not been sure if he was going to get along with the staunch older woman. But as time had passed, he’d started to wonder how he’d ever gotten along without Florence’s help. Now, Flo, as Blake called her, was getting to be more like family than anything else.
Katherine was continuing to work as Prudence’s secretary, but she’d promised Blake that when she became pregnant, she’d cut her work hours down to part-time. Something that Prudence had already agreed to let Katherine do.
As for Nick, she’d expected him to be pleased to be living here on the ranch, but she’d never imagined he’d take to the cowboy life with such gusto. In spite of his young years, he was eager to learn about the livestock and the land, and Blake was always keen to teach him. Each day, she could see him growing closer and closer to Blake and, in return, her husband never failed to let a day go by without giving Nick a block of undivided attention.
“So where have you three been? Riding the range?” Katherine asked.
“I can tell by the smell where they’ve been,” Vivian teased. “In the feedlot. The scent of manure will go great with turkey and dressing.”
“We’ve been looking at the cows that Dad is going to ship down to Red Bluff,” Nick said. “There’s a bunch of them, too!”
“How many?”
This came from Maureen, who was busy pouring whipping cream into a mixing bowl.
“About a thousand head,” Blake answered his mother. “We’ll send the rest up to the Prescott range.”
“Sounds good,” Maureen replied. “Camille will be happy to hear the cattle are coming. She won’t feel so alone then.”
“Camille wants to be alone, Mom. That’s why she’s at Red Bluff,” Vivian said, then pointed at her daughter’s dirty boots. “You stink. Get out of here.”
Her Man on Three Rivers Ranch Page 18
