Finding Forever

by Nika Rhone

  “We gave you every advantage, everything you could have possibly wanted or needed to succeed. The right schools, the right clothes, the right social circle. And yet, you persist in fraternizing with the wrong people and acting so…so common. If you’ve failed, it’s not our fault. We tried our best.”

  Recognizing the martyred tone, Amelia shook her head in disgust. “You’ve spent my entire life making sure I was exactly what you wanted me to be: malleable. Whenever I started to think on my own, tried to stand on my own two feet, you were right there to knock me back down again with your cutting remarks and biting criticisms. That’s why you hate Thea and Lillian so much. They were the ones who kept giving me the courage to try and stand up for myself, not just let you railroad me into being your little wind-up doll, doing what you wanted, saying what you wanted, marrying who you wanted—”

  “I knew they were behind this entire debacle!” Her mother’s nostrils flared in anger. If she’d been the dragon Amelia’s friends jokingly called her, she’d be breathing fire right about now.

  “They weren’t behind anything.”

  “Everything was going along exactly as planned until they showed up.”

  “You mean I was going along exactly as planned.” Uncrossing her legs and sitting forward, hands gripping the edge of the table to keep them from turning into fists, Amelia looked her mother directly in the eye, something she couldn’t remember ever having done before during an argument. “Listen to me carefully, Mother. I called off the wedding. I decided that I didn’t want to…no, that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with Charles.” Just saying his name left a bad taste on her tongue. “My friends, unlike you, trusted me to make my own decisions and, very much unlike you, supported me in them. That is the beginning, middle, and end of their involvement in this. I take full responsibility for handling the situation badly, but I won’t apologize either. I did what I felt I had to do.”

  “Well, then I suppose I have no choice but to do the same.” Pushing back her chair—noiselessly, proving her better manners—she stood. “It pains me greatly, Amelia Ann, but I find that you leave me no choice. After what you’ve done, your father and I have no alternative but to distance ourselves from you in order to avoid the taint your precipitous and thoughtless actions have caused. Throwing away the advantageous opportunities that we secured for you was—”

  “Can we just cut to the chase, please?” Amelia said tiredly.

  Bristling at the rudeness of the interruption, or perhaps it was simply having her prepared speech cut short, her mother sniffed. “I can see that just a few weeks with your friends has undermined all of the years I spent instilling you with a sense of manners.”

  “The chase, Mother,” Amelia said, refusing to rise to the bait.

  Throwing her head back and squaring her shoulders, all the better to look down her thin nose at Amelia, her mother said, “We’re disowning you.” When Amelia didn’t say anything, she continued, “I know that might seem harsh, but you of all people should understand your father has to protect his reputation within the party.”

  Which, of course, was so much more important than protecting his daughter.

  “Harsh? No.” Amelia stood as well. “That is actually nothing less than I’d expect from the both of you.” She replaced her chair with silent care. Emotions swirled inside of her, but they weren’t the ones she’d expected to be feeling. Every confrontation she’d ever had with her mother had been an agony of tension and sickening nausea, twisting her insides until she would agree to just about anything to make it stop. But this time…this time she felt none of it. Not a pain, not a twinge, not even a Pavlovian urge to reach for an antacid. Which, she realized with some surprise, she hadn’t used since shortly after her arrival at the ranch.

  Instead, she felt a sense of relief she never had to entrust her well-being to these two unloving people ever again. By cutting ties to protect themselves, they’d actually done her a huge favor without meaning to. She was free.

  “What on earth are you smiling about?”

  Amelia’s fingers rose to her lips. “I guess I’m just glad to finally have things settled so I can get on with my life.”

  “Get on with your life? Doing what?”

  “Whatever makes me happy.” Although she was still working out what, exactly, that might be. But it definitely wasn’t anything she would find here. Suddenly weary of the whole episode, she said, “Since you feel the need to keep playing games, I’ll just add my dressing table to the list of items we’ll be submitting through the lawyers to contest ownership of. I’m done here.” In more ways than one.

  Anxious to escape into the fresh air and sunshine so she could breathe again, Amelia turned and walked away without offering her mother any kind of farewell. Not because she wanted to thumb her nose at the manners her mother held so dear, but because she honestly had nothing left to say.

  “You were always a great disappointment to us, Amelia Ann,” her mother called, looking to draw that last drop of blood.

  Amelia hesitated for only a second. “Funny,” she said over her shoulder as she reached the doorway. “I was going to say the same thing about you.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “I never took you for a fool.”

  Ignoring the barb as well as the man delivering it, Daryl continued to groom the stallion cross-tied in the barn. Daryl had managed to get onto his back today and ride for almost a full minute. For that, he was treating the horse to an extra rubdown to celebrate their uneasy truce.

  He and Chaz, however, were another matter altogether.

  The man had dug at him nonstop since his return to the ranch. After a week of it, Daryl was close to losing his patience, which seemed to be what he was aiming for. Every chance he got, Chaz brought up Amy. “Do you remember when Amy cooked those godawful rubber eggs?” “Amy would love to see how big the foal is getting.” “If Amy were here, she’d cook us up a big batch of those cookies that tasted like chocolate chip heaven.”

  “Course, I never took you for much of a coward, either, but I guess I was wrong on both counts.”

  Knowing any sudden movements might spook the stallion and ruin all of the progress made so far with the skittish beast, Daryl kept his tone calm. “Chaz, only the fact my father’s already short a man till Zeke’s leg heals up is keeping you from spitting a few teeth right now.”

  “Are you denying you let her go ’cause you were too afraid to ask her to stay with you?”

  “I let her go because she didn’t belong here. It was the right thing to do.” He shot Chaz a glare when he made a derisive noise. “It was.”

  “Bullshit. You let her go because it was the easy thing to do.”

  Easy? Hell, no. Bringing Amelia back to Boulder had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Coming back to the Circle R without her had been a close second. Every piece of the ranch seemed to have absorbed her essence and reminded him of her every second of every day. No matter where he turned, how hard he worked himself, how many times he tried to convince himself he’d done the best thing, the right thing. She was a part of the place now, a part of him, and he missed her like hell.

  Not that he’d admit any of that to Chaz, who was still scowling at him. “What the hell business is it of yours, anyway?” Daryl snapped, laying a calming hand on the stallion’s flank when it shifted unhappily at his tone.

  “That girl wanted you to ask her to stay. She loved this ranch.”

  “Then maybe you should call and ask her if she wants to come back and cook full-time if you think she wants to be here so badly.” He’d kill Chaz if he did.

  “She wanted to stay here with you, you ass.” Chaz shook his head. “Makes me sick to see you throwing away a chance that I’d…” He shook his head again.

  “That you’d what?” Daryl put away any pretense of still grooming and walked toward him. He’d tolerated Chaz’s teasing and flirting, but if he thought Daryl would just stand aside while he went after Amelia, then he was c
hewing locoweed instead of hay.

  Chaz plucked the ever-present stalk from his mouth and tossed it aside with an angry snap. “That I did once too. And believe you me, you don’t get that chance back again. It’s a one-time deal. When you screw it up, you pay for it the rest of your miserable, lonely life.”

  There was such a wealth of pain and self-loathing in his voice Daryl had no choice but to take Chaz’s warning to heart. Not that it changed anything. He was still who he was, and Amelia was still who she was. Different people. Different worlds.

  Still, he couldn’t help asking. “What could I possibly have to offer her?”

  Chaz held his arms out wide, indicating everything around them. He didn’t actually say “duh” out loud but his expression said it for him.

  “The ranch isn’t mine.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the ranch, dumbass.” Shaking his head, Chaz brushed past him and started untying the stallion’s leads. “I’ll finish up. The black needs to get used to the people who actually work here.”

  A not so subtle reminder that Daryl’s stay at the Circle R was temporary. After delivering Amelia into the arms of Thea and Evie Fordham, Daryl had filed his reports with Doyle and claimed two weeks of vacation time, which Doyle approved on the spot with his personal thanks for taking such good care of Thea’s friend. Without giving it any thought, Daryl found himself back on the road heading for South Dakota again.

  Now, half that time was gone, and he still didn’t know why he’d come back to the place he spent so many years avoiding.

  He found his father sitting at the kitchen table, a steaming mug of coffee at his elbow as he looked over some papers. Contracts, most likely, judging by the looks of them.

  Pouring a cup of coffee, Daryl joined him. “I made some progress with the black today.”

  “So I heard. That one’s taking longer than I expected to come around. Too stubborn for his own good,” he added, taking a sip of his coffee.

  Subtle his father wasn’t. Daryl gave a silent sigh and waited for another round of “you don’t come home to see your family often enough.” At least Kim wasn’t there to add her extra special dose of guilt to the mix.

  “It’s been good having you here,” his father said, staring into his cup rather than meet Daryl’s eyes, which was very unlike him.

  “I’ve enjoyed being here.” Oddly enough, it was true. Helping with the ranch chores and working the horses had helped to fill the gaping pit that opened up inside him as soon as he’d driven through the gates of the Fordham estate with Amelia, bringing her back into her world. Seeing her dressed in her borrowed jeans and T-shirt in that setting had driven home how far down she’d brought herself to fit into his world. He’d done the right thing leaving her where she belonged.

  Even if it did eat at him every night when he lay alone in his bed, imagining he still smelled the scent of her shampoo on the pillowcase.

  “But you don’t plan on staying.” His father set his cup down with a heavy thud and finally met his son’s gaze with eyes the same dark shade of brown as his own.

  Nope. Definitely not subtle.

  “I haven’t decided yet.” Daryl hedged. “I’ve still got a little time left to think.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the rest of your vacation.”

  “Neither was I.”

  Both men stilled. It was a toss-up who was more surprised by the admission. Him, Daryl decided, because he’d barely even begun to think about it, even in the abstract, much less make a decision. But it was out there now, and his father wouldn’t let him pretend otherwise.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and, well, I guess I realized staying away hasn’t really solved anything.”

  “See now, that’s what I don’t understand. What was there to solve? I thought you’d come to love the ranch after we settled in here. Then, next thing I know, you’re off running the rodeo circuit and coming home less and less in between until finally you just stopped coming home at all. What happened?”

  So many things that to a young boy who’d just lost his mother and the only world he knew seemed so enormous and life altering, but now, with the grace of hindsight, he could view in a much more objective way. But how to explain any of the mess that had clogged his thinking first as a lonely boy and then as an angry young man?

  “You married Kim.” Judging by the look that crossed his father’s face, that hadn’t been the right place to start.

  “What the hell…are you saying it’s Kim’s fault you left?”

  “No. Yes. Fuck!” Daryl ran a hand through his hair and drew a breath, trying to find the right words.

  “That woman has always loved you like you were her own.” There was an edge of temper to the words.

  “I know, I know. She always acted like a mother toward me. Maybe a little too much, sometimes,” he added half under his breath before finishing off his coffee and staring down into his empty cup.

  “Was it because I married her so soon after we lost your mother?”

  “Partly, I suppose.” It had been over a year, but to a child who was grieving, a year was like no time at all.

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “Son, I…”

  “I know, Dad.” Daryl glanced at his father, taking in his tight jawline and the squint that always gave away his discomfort despite his best efforts. “I can count,” he added, trying to lighten the mood. “And Winnie was a little porky for a preemie.”

  As he’d hoped, his father chuckled softly. “Don’t ever let your sister hear you call her that.” The look he gave Daryl was sharp. “Is that it, then? Did you feel left out somehow after Winona was born?”

  “A little, I guess.” A lot, actually. Not that he ever blamed Winnie.

  “I would’ve married Kim anyway. I loved her. I love her even more now. And it’s always hurt her you never seemed to think of the ranch as your home.”

  “But it’s not my home.” How to explain what he barely understood himself? “When we were living out in the foreman’s cabin, just the two of us, I thought it would be the best thing in the world if we could live there forever.” Especially after the month they’d spent staying with his father’s parents when they first returned to South Dakota. The wide-open spaces seemed like heaven after that cramped little house brimming with spite and resentment. “After you married Kim, for a little while it seemed like I’d gotten my wish. But then…”

  “Then?”

  “I was reminded that even though I’d moved up to living in ‘the big house’ I was still just some half-blood stray living here on Kim’s charity. We both were. The ranch was hers, and you married into it.”

  “Reminded? By who? No, never mind, I can guess.” His father growled, calloused fingers drumming on the tabletop. “Those nasty bitches who just love to stick their nose into everyone’s business and make it their own. What did you call them? The horse faces or something?”

  “The Harridans,” Daryl said with a grin. “Although after seeing them in town a few weeks ago, I think horse faces is pretty accurate. They haven’t aged well, have they?”

  “And they haven’t changed either, not a one of them.” He muttered one of the words Daryl knew his stepmother would lose her mind over if she heard it uttered in her house. And that was the problem, of course. His father might run the place, might have even brought it back from the brink of foreclosure, but at the end of the day, it was still Kim’s house. Her ranch, her home. Not his. Not really.

  “They might be bitches, but they were right,” Daryl said quietly. How he wished they weren’t. “Kim marrying the hired help doesn’t make any of this really ours. We just showed up at the right time and benefited from her being alone and desperate.”

  His father drew a deep breath, but instead of uttering what Daryl guessed would be another colorful phrase from his Corps days, Hank pushed the chair back with a screech of wood-on-wood and stalked out of the room.

  His whole body one tense knot, Daryl
watched him go, then leaned both forearms on the table and hung his head with a soft curse of his own. “Well, you certainly managed to fuck that to hell and beyond, dickhead,” he muttered to himself. He was still debating whether he should go after his father and try to smooth things over when the ring of boot heels stomped their way back toward the kitchen.

  Here we go.

  But instead of angry words, his father threw a folded piece of paper onto the table in front of him. “Read it.”

  Warily, Daryl opened an old photocopy of a document. The word “deed” jumped off the page first, followed by the name of the ranch. He skimmed over the large block of legalese down to the name Hanska Raintree. “So she legally signed the ranch over to you when you got married.” That didn’t change anything.

  In fact, it made it worse. The Harridans had used worse words than hired help. Terms like gold digger and opportunist had also come up during the conversations they had that just happened to take place where he’d be unable to not overhear them.

  “No, she signed it over to me when I bought it from her. Before I married her.”

  “You…what?” Daryl stared at his father in surprise. “When you bought it?” He shook his head. “Where would you have gotten the money to do that?” Because if there was one thing he remembered clearly about his mother, it was her complaining there was never enough money to afford the little luxuries she wanted. And a ranch sure as hell cost more than a bottle of fancy perfume.

  “From your mother’s life insurance.” For the first time, his father sounded uncertain and more than a little uncomfortable. He retook his seat. “There was a small policy through the Corps we took out when you were born. I’d planned on leaving it in the bank for you to use for college or whatever you wanted to do with it when you were old enough, but then I decided using it to make sure you had a home that was always there for you, and where you would always feel welcome, was more important than worrying about student loans.”