by Merry Farmer
“Anyone with half a sense of what fossils look like could have determined what that bone was,” she argued.
“But nobody did until you came along,” he argued right back. “And I’m not even talking about the fossil. I’m talking about the way you’ve stepped up and made yourself an indispensable part of this town.”
“I haven’t.” She frowned.
“I think Carlos and the guys on the Piedmont Panthers would disagree.” He tried to add a teasing smile to his comment, but it was hard to maintain when she wasn’t buying it at all. “My dad certainly thinks you’re special,” he went on, bringing out the big guns.
Laura’s posture relaxed and she let her arms drop to her sides, but when Ted tried to take her hands, she still wasn’t having any of it. “Your dad is a sweet guy who likes everyone.”
“Actually, he’s not,” Ted said with a smirk. “He’s a grumpy old bulldog who rarely speaks. But he likes you.”
He almost had her. He watched as she wavered, skating so close to giving in. But at the last minute, she took a breath and said, “That’s me. That has nothing to do with the two of us. There shouldn’t be a two of us.”
Frustration boiled through Ted all over again. “What is it going to take for me to convince you that we are perfect for each other?” Because as maddening as she was, he had no interest whatsoever in walking away from her.
“You can’t convince me,” she shot back. “I know who I am, and I know who you are, and it’s like that whole thing about fish and birds falling in love.”
“Do you love me?” he asked, point blank.
She opened her mouth. It would have killed him if she said no, but no words came out at all. She just stood there gaping, cheeks growing pinker by the second. It was time to go all in.
“Because I love you,” he said. A ripple of fear spilled through him. Confessing his love shouldn’t have carried such a huge risk with it. “I love you, Laura Kincade.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “But, you can’t.”
“Whether I can or not, I do. You can’t change that.”
“Ted, this so awkward.” She took a half step back.
He took a full step toward her, but stopped himself from reaching for her. He did not want her to pull away even more. “I’ve loved you almost from the first moment I saw you,” he went on. “You’re different from every other woman I’ve known.”
“That’s exactly my point,” she pleaded with him. “I’m too different.”
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing.”
“But there is,” she argued. “I’m just a dorky girl with dorky interests who…well, you know the rest.”
“I fail to see why that disqualifies you from falling in love and living happily ever after,” he growled.
“It doesn’t.” She let out a frustrated breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know how to explain it. Relationships are….”
He blinked, waiting for her to go on. “Relationships are?”
“Not for me,” she admitted in a small voice.
“I don’t believe that for a second. Especially since I want you more with every breath I take, math, rockets, dinosaurs, and all.”
She glanced up at him with a doubtful look. “If we were back in high school and you tried to date me, all of your cool friends would make fun of you.”
“Laura, we’re not in high school,” he said, close to scolding her. “We’re grown-ups who have a lot better understanding of the world and a heck of a lot more emotional maturity than that. So don’t use it as an excuse.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Would all your nerdy friends make fun of me because I’m not as smart as the rest of you?” He cut off her complaint, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Do you or your paleontologist friends think less of me because I’ve barely traveled beyond Wyoming?”
“No.”
“Because I’ll be honest,” he pushed on. “The fact that you’ve been all over the world while I’ve never gone anywhere really made me worry at first.”
“It did?” The faintest sign of hope flickered in her eyes.
“Yes, it did.” He planted his hands on his hips, the level of honesty he’d found giving him confidence. “I didn’t think you’d find me all that interesting. I’m just some cowboy hick from the middle of nowhere who doesn’t know anything beyond cows and horses. I didn’t think I’d be enough for you.”
“You didn’t?” She blinked into a look of shock.
“No. But I got over it. Because we have a ton of other things in common. You taught me things that made me feel like my horizons were expanding. I thought we were growing together as people. Because that’s what people do.”
He stopped there, watching her. A thousand emotions were flickering across her expression, but he couldn’t keep up with any of them. One moment he thought he’d convinced her, only to have her face pinch with doubt the next.
“You’ve made me think about things in a way I never have before,” he went on when she stayed silent, pulling out the big guns. “You’ve made me think about the future, about the life we could have. Together.”
A faint, heart-rending whimper rose up from her throat. She rested her weight on one hip, glanced up to the sky, and blinked as if she was holding back tears. “I’m not ready for that, Ted,” she whispered.
“Why?” Every part of him wanted to pull her into his arms and never let go.
She shook her head and met his eyes with a startling amount of frankness. “I’m not experienced enough.”
The comment seemed so wildly out of place that he quirked an eyebrow. “Experienced? Laura, you’ve traveled the world, both in the Army and on your own.”
“No.” She shook her head harder, squeezing her eyes shut. “Experienced. In bed.”
He flinched in confusion. “Princess, I have zero complaints in that department.” His lips itched to grin, but the timing wasn’t right.
A look of extreme guilt came over her, and she looked dolefully up at him. “Half the time…more than half the time…I don’t have a clue what I’m doing in bed.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I did fool you,” she went on, her cheeks getting so red it was alarming. “I fooled you into thinking that I was the kind of sophisticated woman that guys like.”
Between feeling like she was about to confess something important and the frustration of having to drag it out of her, Ted was sure his brain was going to implode. “For the last time, not all guys want the same thing. I don’t want a sophisticated woman, like Sandy,” he emphasized what he knew her hang-up was. “I. Want. You.”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at him. Her mouth twisted into a strange shape, like she was both trying to spit something out and keep it to herself. At last, she said, “Our first time together.”
He waited. When she added nothing, he prompted, “Yeah?”
She swallowed, her eyes going wide. “That was my first time.”
He heard the words, then reacted as though they’d been on a time delay. Halfway through taking a breath, he froze. For a second, he felt nothing at all. Then a hot, stabbing sense of betrayal hit him.
“You went to bed with me that night and you didn’t tell me that you were a virgin?” The question came out in a dangerously quiet, strangled hush.
Laura nodded.
“You let something that important happen between us, and you didn’t tell me how important it was?” His heart thudded against his chest with emotion that was as strong as it was paradoxical. He wanted to feel honored, special, because she had given something so precious to him, but all he felt was furious.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I probably should have told you.”
“You think?” he asked, suddenly loud.
She winced. “Sorry.”
“Laura, that’s not the kind of thing you hide from someone.” He rocked from foot to foot, pushing a hand through his hair. “That moment should have
been special for the both of us.” He scrambled to remember exactly how they’d made love that first time. Had he been too forceful? Too focused on his own needs? Had he made it good for her? Is that what she meant when she said she wasn’t ready? The idea that he’d pushed himself on her made him feel vaguely sick.
“If I had told you, you wouldn’t have done it,” she argued, regaining some of her energy.
“That’s not—” He stopped, wondering. Would he have held back? If he’d known that she was a virgin, would he have not had sex with her? Would he have treated her differently?
Yeah, he would have. He’d have stopped things from going too far that night. He’d have planned something special, made a big deal out of it. He would have waited until she was ready. And she might not have gone out with him again, might not have given him the chance to be with her at all. It was her choice whether to sleep with him or not, and by not telling him, she’d held onto the power to make that decision that he would have unwittingly taken from her. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t deeply hurt by her silence.
“See,” she said before he could think of something else to say. “It’s just not going to work. You deserve someone who won’t lie to you.”
“You didn’t lie to me,” he said, sounding exhausted. He rubbed a hand over his face.
“I didn’t tell you the truth, and that’s kind of the same thing,” she insisted.
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
Ted clenched his jaw. He loved her, but God, she was stubborn. “You should have told me,” he said, forcing himself to calm down. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “But I can respect your decision not to. The point is that we’re together now, and we can work through this.”
“No, Ted.” She sighed. “The point is that we’re not together, because I’m breaking us up.”
His eyes went wide. “We are not breaking up.”
“We are,” she insisted. “We never should have started dating in the first place.”
He felt as though he were stuck on an infernal hamster wheel. “Laura. I love you. I don’t know how else to prove that to you.”
“I know you love me,” she admitted, face crumpling until she looked downright miserable. “And…and I love you too.”
His brow flew up. Never had a confession of love made him so angry. Especially not one he’d been waiting to hear for weeks. “You love me?”
“I do,” she wailed, throwing up her hands. “Of course, I do. You’re funny and gorgeous and amazing in bed. You’re warm and down-to-earth and so, so cool.”
“Then I don’t understand.” He held his arms to the side, bristling with frustration. “If you love me and I love you and we’re standing here in the middle of the street saying it, why are we breaking up?”
“Because love is scary,” she confessed with a sigh of such deep gravity that he felt like they’d finally hit the bedrock of everything their problems were based on. “It’s really scary. I can’t walk around every day terrified that you’ll finally come to your senses and ditch me for someone else, someone better.”
“I won’t.” There was nothing more than that for him to say.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “Losing someone you love hurts too much. I know. I’ve lost people, and I can’t do that again.”
“You won’t lose me,” he argued.
“You don’t know that,” she repeated with more emotion.
“I—”
He stopped. Blake. His throat closed up. The last boy she’d loved with her whole heart had died. And even though Blake was her brother, love that deep came from the same place. She’d lost it before, and even though she’d seemed cool about it, he suddenly saw that she wasn’t. Not even a little bit. This wasn’t about her self-esteem at all. She was still in horrible pain from losing her brother. She’d been saying it all along. She wasn’t ready to give her heart away and take the risk of having it broken again.
It all made sudden, terrible sense.
“Laura,” he spoke her name with a whole new tenderness as the pieces fell into place.
“No.” She took a step back as if his tone had been an attempt to hug her. “It’s over. I’ve decided. You deserve someone better. That’s all there is to it.” She took another step back. “I’m going home now.”
His back ached, his muscles so taut with frustration that he wasn’t sure he could move if he tried. Beyond that, it was clear that even if he wrestled her to the ground and kissed her within an inch of her life, it wouldn’t make a dent. He finally saw how big the problem in front of him was. Like digging up one lousy bone and unearthing a massive fossil instead.
“Okay,” he whispered, scrambling to figure out a new way to connect with her. “You do what you need to do.” He couldn't even tell her that things weren’t over between them, that he wouldn’t let them be.
But as she sent him one last, quizzical look and turned to go, he knew as sure as sunshine that things definitely weren’t over.
Chapter Seventeen
Ted’s determination had started to fizzle out by the time he pulled his truck into its parking space back home at the ranch. He slumped out of the cab, slammed the door in an attempt to relieve some tension, then stomped across the yard to the kitchen door. Any hopefulness that Sandy’s determination to fight the Bonnevilles had given him as he walked out of her office had been drowned by Laura’s inability to see how she wasn’t letting herself be happy. That and the way she had shut him out.
He sighed heavily as he slogged into the kitchen, then stopped at the sight of his dad sitting at the table. The laptop they used for business was open on the table in front of him, and whatever Roscoe was reading, it left a frown on his face.
“Something wrong?” Ted asked. He hung his keys on the peg by the door and crossed to the counter. Roscoe must have recently brewed a pot of coffee, and at that moment, Ted couldn’t think of anything he wanted more. Unless it was for Laura to come to her senses and tell him she’d changed her mind.
“You ever heard of tweeting?” Roscoe asked in an ominous, gravelly voice.
“Yeah.” Ted was too upset with everything to make a joke about his dad’s question.
Roscoe nodded to the laptop screen. “Ronny Bonneville’s gone and done a tweet about Laura’s fossil.”
Ted clenched his jaw as he poured black coffee into a mug and took a long gulp. “Is he saying anything that won’t make me want to punch him?”
“Nope,” Roscoe answered and closed the laptop with a grunt. “How’d your meeting with Sandy go?”
Ted let out a long, rough groan and moved to slump into a chair at the table. “The part with Sandy was okay.”
“She think she can fight this?”
Ted nodded. “She says it won’t be easy to convince the Bonnevilles to give up, but she’s ‘cautiously optimistic’.”
“Those Bonnevilles are like a dog with a bone when it comes to making trouble for the rest of us,” Roscoe said.
“Not sure that’s the best metaphor in this situation, Dad,” Ted grumbled.
They were silent for a moment. Ted drank his coffee, appreciating the hot, bitter sensation of it going down. Roscoe leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and studied Ted with narrowed eyes. “What else is wrong?” he asked.
There was no fooling Dad. Ted finished one more gulp of coffee, then set the mug deliberately on the table. “Laura dumped me.”
Roscoe’s only reaction was a subtle, incredulous look. And coming from him, that was as good as a shout. “Why?” he asked.
“I dunno, Dad.” Ted let out a pitiful breath and scrubbed both hands over his face. “She keeps saying that we’re not right for each other, that I deserve someone better than a nerdy girl, but I’m beginning to understand that that’s just her cover story.”
Roscoe snorted.
“It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell her that
she’s the only woman I want,” Ted went on. “She keeps trying to tell me I should be with Sandy.”
“Tried it. Didn’t work,” Roscoe said.
“That’s what I attempted to explain to her. I don’t even think she really means it. That’s just what she’s telling herself to avoid what’s really wrong.”
Ted slumped back in his chair, toying with the handle of his coffee mug. Roscoe didn’t dig for more, so he volunteered it. “She kept a few things from me that she should have told me,” he said, partially against his better judgement. But this was his dad, after all. There was no better person in the world to go to for advice. Except maybe his mom. A sudden wave of grief and longing for her caught him unawares. He would have given anything for her to still be there.
“Laura doesn’t seem like the lying type,” Roscoe went on.
“She’s not. She just failed to mention that….” He winced and rolled his shoulders as he debated whether to share. At last, he let out a breath and rushed out, “She didn’t tell me I was her first until just today.”
Roscoe grunted. He crossed his arms and stroked his chin in thought. “She’s a good woman. A faithful woman. I’m not surprised.”
“That she wouldn’t tell me?” Ted asked slowly, unsure where his dad was going with his train of thought.
“She’s scared,” Roscoe concluded.
“Of what? I’m not that scary.”
“To her, you are.”
Ted frowned and took another drink of coffee. He didn’t want to agree with his dad. It sucked to think that he could possibly be the kind of guy women were scared of. He wasn’t Ronny Bonneville or any of his buddies, after all.
“Your mom broke up with me three times before she finally gave up and believed me when I said I wanted to marry her.”
His dad’s casually delivered bombshell nearly caused Ted to choke on his coffee. “She did?”
