Sarah-Jane clamped her lips together, squelching the questions that rose inside her. She turned and looked out the window again.
“I should have called.”
Pain sliced through her with all the finesse of a dull knife. “Why? You don’t owe me a single thing.”
“Dammit to hell, Sarah-Jane.” His voice was tight. “You’re not making this any easier.”
A dozen dull knives, she thought, aching. She looked at him. “Making what easier?” Ever since she saw that internet photo, her heart had been slowly, steadily shattering. Seeing him now, she could still feel shards tumbling.
“Trying to make things right with you.”
“Why?”
A muscle flexed in his jaw. Regardless of the dark smudges beneath his brilliant blue eyes, he looked so incredibly handsome that it was hard to bear. “Because I need to be able to make something in my life right.”
She shouldn’t have any tears left but she felt them burning behind her eyes anyway. “I’m a big girl, Wyatt. You don’t have to worry about me just because we slept together.”
“Maybe I want to worry about you.”
She couldn’t afford to believe that. Nor could she think of an appropriate response so she just stared blindly out the window again. She was vaguely aware that they’d driven right out of Red Rock and she hadn’t even noticed.
In fact, they were heading in the direction of the Double Crown. But she couldn’t for the life of her think why he’d want to take her back there. She pleated the worn strap of her purse and tried not to think about it.
As it turned out, he drove right on past the turnoff for the Double Crown. She had no idea how far, but guessed they’d gone at least several miles when he pulled off on a rough road that seemed little more than a coyote path to her.
They jostled along for a while and then he turned again, heading up a gentle incline and finally stopping right in the middle of nowhere. He got out of the truck, came around and opened her door. “What do you think?”
Confused, she looked from his tense face to the expanse of land spread out below them. “Think of what?”
He unsnapped her safety belt and curled his hand around hers. “Come.”
Nerves jangling, she slid out of the truck and immediately pulled her hand away. She was wearing tennis shoes, jeans and a new, pale pink Stocking Stitch T-shirt that even Felicity had praised, and she felt oddly dwarfed by him.
But then he moved back, giving her space as if he sensed her need for it, and waved his hand at the horizon. “What do you think of the view?”
She thought he looked as weary as she felt. But she knew he wasn’t referring to himself, and she turned her gaze away from him. The view in front of her was lovely, dipping down on the other side of the hill where they stood, offering a gently rolling spread of wild grass. There were more hills off to the east full of trees. They reminded her too much of the hillside where they’d gone horseback riding and she looked away, instead watching a hawk swoop lazily through the air. “It’s a beautiful view,” she said without emotion.
“Then our bedroom window should face it.”
She heard the words, but couldn’t seem to make sense of them. “Excuse me?”
He put his hands on her shoulders, angling her just so, until she had that distant hillside square in her line of sight again. “Those are our trees, Sarah-Jane,” he murmured. “I can’t lay claim to a deed because they stand on Double Crown land, but they’re ours all the same.”
“Wyatt,” she whispered. “What are you trying to do to me?”
His arm came across the top of her shoulder, finger pointing from the trees on the east to a point just as far to the west. “That’s how far the land goes, Sarah-Jane. There’s room for us. For my brothers. For us all to make new homes. New lives. All I need to know is whether you like it as much as we do.”
She heard him. But the words “our bedroom” were still ringing around inside her head. “You bought it?”
“I’m going to.” His hands left her for a moment and he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He punched a few buttons. “Mrs. Leyva? Wyatt Fortune.” Sarah-Jane watched his lips twitch. “She likes it, so we have a deal. That’s right. Cash. Just like we agreed this morning.” He named a sum that prompted Sarah-Jane to feel an urgent need to sit down. “My attorney will be in touch with your granddaughter to handle the rest of the details of the sale.”
Cash. Good Lord. She did need to sit. She twisted from beneath his hand on her shoulder and went back to the truck to sit shakily on the running board.
Wyatt followed her, though he was still speaking to Mrs. Leyva. “It’s been a pleasure, Mrs. Leyva. All right. Gertrude. You do drive a hard bargain, ma’am.” He chuckled at something she said. Then he was telling the woman goodbye and sliding the phone back in his pocket, giving Sarah-Jane a wary look. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re actually going to buy this land.”
“I have bought this land,” he corrected. “As of now, Gertrude Leyva and I have a deal. After the dickering she subjected me to for the past week, you can believe I’m going to hold her to it. All that’s left now is the paperwork which, fortunately, the attorneys can take care of.”
“Plus a not insignificant exchange of cash,” she reminded. “How rich are you?”
“Rich enough,” he dismissed. “Why are you so pale? You said you liked the view.”
She gaped at him. “Wyatt, you disappeared for a week. Again!” He’d been absent from her life almost as long as he’d been in it, if the truth be known. Though knowing it didn’t seem to lessen the impact he’d had on her. “Then you just appear out of the blue, drive me out to the middle of beautiful nowhere and bandy around phrases like our bedroom.” She suddenly pushed to her feet and jammed her palms against his chest so hard he actually fell back a step. “You’re darn lucky I’m only pale and not collapsed in an unconscious lump on the ground.” Her voice rose even more. “What on earth are you thinking?”
Wyatt eyed Sarah-Jane’s temper-filled face. “I was thinking that as long as you liked the view as much as I did, this is where I want to build our house.”
“Our house.” She tore her fingers through her hair, which had been smoothed back from her pale face in a sleek ponytail, leaving it in complete disarray. “You have got to stop saying things like that!”
“Why?”
She stared at him like he’d sprouted another head on his shoulders. “Because there is no our.”
He deserved that. He knew it, but he still felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. “I thought you’d want there to be.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She turned away, started to rake her fingers through her hair again, only to get caught on the band trying valiantly to hold it in place. She ripped it off and her hair swung down past her shoulders, smooth and glossy and winking red fire beneath the bright sunlight.
He wanted to reach for her. Even started to, but shoved his hands into the front pockets of his trousers instead.
Finally, she turned to face him. Her face was calmer. She propped her hands on her hips and he tried not to notice the lush swell of her breasts or the high points of her nipples that were staring up at him, taunting him through her thin, snug T-shirt. What had she done with her baggy polos?
“I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again, and then you spring this on me. Wanting to live together when we’ve only ever slept—”
“I don’t want you just living with me. I want you to marry me.”
Her eyes widened. Her face went white.
Not exactly the reaction he’d hoped for.
“Wyatt,” she whispered. “You can’t just propose to me because you’re running away from what happened in Atlanta.”
He stared at her. “That’s what you think?”
She raised her hands. “What else can I think? Don’t bother telling me you’re in love with me!”
His mouth opened. Closed. Definitely not going the way he’d hop
ed. “Would that be so impossible?” He’d spent the past week away from her, facing the fact that he did.
But pain had dropped over her face like a shroud. She didn’t answer. “Did your father explain why he gave away those shares in JMF?”
Inside his pockets, his fists curled tighter. “No.”
“Have you tried to talk to him again?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Because you still refuse to consider the possibility that he could have a good reason for his actions?” She pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaled, and dropped her hand again. When she looked at him, her eyes were wet. “Wyatt, if you—and your brothers—if all of you want to make new lives in Red Rock, then do it. But I can’t be a part of it.”
“You said you loved me.”
“What?” She looked appalled.
“When we made love. You said you loved me.” He refused to believe he’d been so wrong.
Her throat worked. She shook her head sharply. “If I did marry—” she seemed to stumble over the word “—you, assuming that you didn’t just disappear—”
He winced, but allowed her the shot. Mostly because she hadn’t denied loving him. She hadn’t confirmed it. But she hadn’t denied it, either.
“—Someday, sooner or later I—or our children—are bound to make some decision or some mistake you won’t like. What then?”
“You want children?” His thoughts ran off on a tangent, imagining brown-eyed little girls as unexpectedly consternating as their mother and little boys as wild as he’d once been.
“Yes.” Her voice was a longing sigh. Then she shook herself. “That’s not the point! The point is, what happens when we’re not able to live up to your ideals of right and wrong? Are you going to cut us out as easily as you’ve cut out your father?”
“That’s entirely different,” he dismissed flatly. “It’s my life he’s messing with.”
She stared at him sadly. “It would be our life you’re messing with if you can’t learn to recognize that not everything is always as black-and-white as you think. I’ve already had a taste of what it feels like for you to just go off somewhere, and we’re not even truly involved!”
It had felt pretty involving to him. “I wouldn’t do what he’s done.”
“No. You just walk away for a week now and then.” She pressed her lips together. Her gaze slid over the landscape around them. “I don’t know what to make of you, Wyatt. I never wanted to believe that you’d—” She broke off. Shook her head.
“That I’d what?”
“It doesn’t matter. You never made any promises to me. I know that. I just didn’t realize how quickly you’d move from one—” her lips twisted “—conquest, to the next.”
“Conquest!” He figured he owed her some latitude. But this was a different kettle altogether. “I never treated you like a conquest.” Never once thought of her in those terms. He’d never thought of any woman in those terms.
Her eyes suddenly flashed and with her hair streaming behind her, she looked like some magnificent fury sent from the heavens. “Who was the tall, skinny blonde in Arizona, then?”
“What?”
Her teeth bared. Clenched together. “The one whose picture is blasted all over the internet with your arm around her! I guess you only said all that about sharp angles and bones sticking out when you were taking pity on poor, plain Sarah-Jane!”
“The only people I saw in Arizona were Gertrude Leyva and her granddaughter, who also happens to be her lawyer. And getting them to meet with me in the first place wasn’t easy. Getting them around to thinking that selling this land to me was a good idea was even harder.” He clamped down hard on his own temper. “I don’t know what the hell picture you saw, but whatever it was, it damn sure didn’t show me out making some goddamned conquest!”
Her chest was heaving with the hard breaths she was drawing. “Then why couldn’t you just pick up your phone, Wyatt? You know. Just one call is all it would have taken. A simple, hey, I’m in Arizona trying to buy up a little land.” Her eyes glittered and her jaw set. “I never expected every minute of your time, Wyatt.” Her voice went hoarse. “If you were finished with me, you could have just said so!”
“I just asked you to marry me. Does that sound like I’m finished with you?” He clawed at the tie strangling his throat and ripped it off to shove in his pocket. “You’re the one who evidently thinks I’m not fit husband material.”
She looked at him. “You just left, Wyatt. No word. No anything. How could you do that if I actually mattered to you?”
“Because you scared the hell out of me! I didn’t want to face how much you did matter!”
Her gaze lowered. She gnawed on her lip. “And I’m supposed to believe that suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, you have.”
“When did you figure out you were in love with me?” Only a week ago, he’d been afraid to hear her tell him the words. And now, he was afraid that she wouldn’t.
“When you took me out there,” she finally said huskily, and nodded toward the distant trees. She blinked and a tear slid down her cheek. “One minute I just wanted you to want me.” Her wet gaze slid to his. “And the next I realized I wanted it all.”
“I’m offering it all, Sarah-Jane. Everything I am. Everything I have. It’s yours. All you have to do is say yes.”
She covered her mouth. Looked away. Shook her head. “I’m sorry, Wyatt. I...I can’t.”
“You’re saying no to my proposal.” He didn’t know why he needed clarification. Her answer had already knocked the life out of him.
“Was it really a proposal?” Her voice was barely audible. “Or an escape plan?”
He looked at her, standing right in the very spot he’d let himself think their future could begin. Only there was no future. Not with her. “I guess there’s nothing left to do but take you home, then.” He finally roused himself enough to state the obvious.
She didn’t answer. Just looked away and swiped her hand quickly over her cheek.
His chest ached. “I never wanted to make you cry, Sarah-Jane.”
She blinked hard. Gave him a shimmering brown look. “I know you didn’t, Wyatt.” She swiped her cheek again and turned away, heading for the truck. Quiet dignity seemed to roll off her in waves as she climbed up on to the high seat.
He, on the other hand, just wanted to beat the hell out of something. He tore open his collar so roughly the button popped off, reminding him with vicious glee of the buttons he’d left in her bed, and followed her.
In silence, he drove her back to her apartment. She gathered up her purse that looked like it should have retired a decade ago and looked at him. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered and pushed open the door to leave.
“Sarah-Jane. If I’d have called you, would you still be saying no?”
Her eyes closed. She pressed the tip of her tongue to her upper lip for a long moment, seeming to be hunting for something. Strength, maybe. Then she nodded. Just once, before slipping out of the truck and hurrying up the walkway to her apartment door.
She could forgive him for being a cowardly fool.
But she couldn’t trust that he would never cut her out of his life the way she believed he’d cut out his father.
Chapter Thirteen
“Wait a minute.” Asher was staring at Wyatt with shock. “You proposed?”
Wyatt threw his briefcase down on one of the couches arranged in the common area of their hotel suite. “You proposed once to a woman yourself.”
“And look how well that turned out,” Asher reminded flatly. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s not to push a woman before she’s ready! Lynn wasn’t ready for marriage and she certainly wasn’t ready for—” He bit off his words, giving Jace—who was sitting at the dining table by the windows coloring in a book—a telling look. “For the rest,” he finished.
Wyatt thought there was a world of difference between Sarah-Jane and his former sister-in-law. Sarah-Jane, for one, di
dn’t have a selfish bone in her body. Considering the way Lynn had walked away not only from Asher but her own child, Wyatt tarred her with the blackest selfishness.
“You’ve only known her a few weeks.”
“So?” He still felt like beating something.
Asher lifted his hands peaceably. “So, nothing. Just an observation.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway. Like I said. She turned me down. Flat.”
Asher was silent for about a half a moment. “Guess that must feel a little new for you.”
Wyatt tore off his suit coat and dumped it in a heap. Until he’d gone to Arizona, he hadn’t worn a suit since Emily’s wedding. He couldn’t say that he’d missed it. If accepting the job he’d been offered with the Fortune Foundation meant wearing one every day again, he might have to rethink it.
He removed the preliminary papers he’d taken to Arizona out of his briefcase and handed them to Asher. “It’s a done deal, soon as everyone signs on their dotted lines.” It was a lot more complicated than that, which Asher knew, but there was no need to explain that to him. “The map of the property is in there, too. Divide it up however you all decide.”
Asher slowly took the papers. “You still want the two acres on the ridge, don’t you?”
If he wasn’t looking out on that view with Sarah-Jane beside him, what did it matter? “Divide it up however you want,” he said again. He headed across the spacious room toward the bedroom he’d been using.
“Wyatt.” Asher’s voice stopped him. “Why did you propose to Sarah-Jane?”
“Because I’m happy when I’m with her.”
His brother swore softly, realization dawning. “You really do love her.”
The fact that Wyatt did, whether he’d learned it too late or not, was moot. “She turned me down, remember?”
“Did she say why?”
And then some.
Asher must have been able to read the answer in his face. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“There’s nothing to do! She said no!” He slammed his hand against the doorjamb and the wood splintered. He swore again only to realize Jace was watching him with alarm.
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