by Seton, Cora
Chapter 19
‡
Austin stared at the boy on his front steps. He hadn’t reached his full height, but it was plain to see that he’d be as tall as Austin someday and he had the Hall look to his eyes and jaw. Richard Ward. Which made him Heather Ward’s son.
Shock came first, followed swiftly by anger. Heather had a child and she’d never told him—let alone asked his permission? She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t go and have a child without even letting him know.
But she had.
He had a son. A son she’d kept hidden from him for more than twelve years. A son she’d denied him. Austin had made decisions with his life, put himself in harm’s way, all the while thinking there was no one who’d be affected by the outcome—no one who depended on him, anyway.
Had Heather known she was pregnant when she dumped him all those years ago? Had she decided he wasn’t worthy to be a father and taken him out of the equation? The cold-heartedness of it shook him to the core.
The boy stared back at him, a muscle in his jaw pulsing, and Austin realized how much courage it must have taken him to ride out here. Regardless of how he felt about Heather—or Richard’s existence—he had to respect that. No wonder the boy spent so much time pedaling back and forth. Like a good soldier, he’d sussed out the enemy before making his attack. The kid probably thought Austin had abandoned him and his mother. He took a shaky breath, struggling to control the emotions warring within him—fury over Heather’s deception, wonder at the strong, brave boy standing before him, fear over his rank inadequacy for the task of being a parent. All he knew was that none of this was the boy’s fault. Richard was just a kid.
So what now? What should he say? Should he welcome Richard or send him straight back to his mother? Austin knew he was far too broken to be of any use to the boy.
But as they stared at each other, something happened he didn’t expect. Richard’s chin trembled and without warning an instinct clicked within Austin that made him stride forward and pull him into a strong hug.
Richard stiffened. In a move so quick Austin didn’t have time to respond, he pulled back, yanked an arm free and punched Austin in the eye. Ella shrieked and Austin staggered back a step, more out of surprise than because he’d lost his balance. The kid had an arm, but he was no match for a grown man. Austin recovered himself and stepped forward, meeting the boy face to face.
“I’ll take that. Once,” he said to Richard in a low, firm tone. “But you have anything else to say to me, you use your words.”
“Where the fuck have you been?” Richard’s voice cracked and shot up with adolescent vigor. “Where have you been for twelve years?”
A fair question. “In Afghanistan, mostly. South America. Iraq.” He took a breath and added quietly, “I didn’t know about you. Your mother never told me.”
Richard held up his hands mutely and Austin understood what he meant to say. No excuse would be good enough. How could his father not know about him? How could his father not care?
“You have to believe me. If I’d known anything—if I’d even guessed, I’d have been here. I’d never have left.”
“So you screwed my mother and ran away?” Richard was clearly fighting back tears and furious at himself for it.
“No.” Austin leaned forward for emphasis. “I was dating your mother and my father died suddenly. My family lost the right to live on this ranch. We had to leave. It was a crazy time. Maybe your mother didn’t even know she was pregnant before we took off.”
“You didn’t call her? Or write?”
“We were young. We were kids.”
Richard shook his head, his disgust plain to see. “Well, now you know.” He stepped backward down the porch stairs. “Now you’ve seen me. And I’ve seen you.”
Austin steeled himself against the boy’s next words. Richard didn’t disappoint him. He grabbed his bicycle. Turned it around. “And you can go fuck yourself!” He climbed on awkwardly and rode off as fast as he could.
“You have to go after him. You can’t let him leave like that.” Ella stayed where she was, hovering in the doorway. Only five feet away from him but the gulf between them loomed large. He could only imagine what this scene looked like through her eyes. He’d knocked up a girl and she hadn’t even bothered to track him down to tell him about it. What kind of a man did that make him?
“He’s too upset. He’ll hate himself for crying in front of us.” Austin knew those were just excuses. “He needs to go home, get it out of his system. We’ll meet again and sort it out. After I talk to his mother.” After he figured out what the hell he was going to do. The last thing he needed right now was an extra complication.
He stopped that train of thought. Whatever Richard was, he wasn’t a complication. He was a person—a boy who obviously wanted a father, regardless of his parting words.
A father. He was a father.
A deadbeat, absentee asshole of a father.
Austin sat down heavily on the steps and braced his hands on his knees, his chest so tight it was like a vise was squeezing the air right out of him. The son he never knew he had hated him. What the hell did he do now?
Why hadn’t Heather come after him all those years ago? Did she think he wouldn’t do his duty by her? He’d loved her back then—as well as any teenage boy could love a girl—he’d have married her in a heartbeat. Hadn’t she wanted him?
What would she do now that he was back? Would she accept his presence in their son’s life? She’d have to. He balled his fists, then remembered Ella. The woman he’d married. The woman who was starting to mean so much to him. He dropped his hands and half-turned. “Ella, I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry to me,” she said in a clipped voice. “Seems like you’ve got someone else to apologize to first.” She turned on her heel and disappeared inside.
“Ella.” But he didn’t follow her into the Hall. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do in this situation.
When he’d left the Army, all he’d wanted was to be alone, but now fate seemed determined to tangle him up in relationships, first with Ella and now with Richard. Was it all a test? Was he supposed to resist them?
He wished to god he knew.
* * *
Tears filled Ella’s eyes as she made her way through the house to the back door, passing through the dining room and kitchen to avoid Regan in the living room. She opened it and walked blindly across the back lawn, intending to pick up the faded trail she knew would eventually bring her to Chance Creek.
“Everything all right?” Mason called out from the barn as she passed.
“I don’t know.” She kept going, picking up the pace before he could join her. She swiped at her eyes furiously as she walked, angry that she was crying. She wasn’t really married to Austin. Why should it bother her to find out he had a son? Of course a man who could put up an online ad for a fake wife wouldn’t think twice about sleeping with a woman, getting her pregnant, and leaving her without a second look. She pressed her hands to her belly and willed her baby—if there was one—to know that no matter what its father did, she would love him or her enough for two parents.
And what did it matter what Austin did, anyway? She wasn’t sticking around past next April. Austin’s ad had made it perfectly clear he wanted nothing more than an actress to fill in a part. She was the one who’d tempted him to have sex and make it all real. She was the one who’d asked him to make her pregnant. She’d done this to herself. She reached the creek, sat down on the bank and clasped her knees to her chest.
The ache in her heart nearly took her breath away. She’d fallen for him—fallen for the one man she couldn’t ever really have. Austin had never faltered in his position; he wanted a wife for a matter of months, not for a lifetime. Had she listened? Of course not. She’d fallen for Crescent Hall, too—for the wide, sweeping vistas, the mountains in the distance, the crazy old house with its circular tower, and the bunkhouse she shared with Austin.
In her fantasies, she’d begun to believe there might be a future here for her even after the year was up. She’d begun to daydream about horses and family and even children, but now the joke was on her. Just when she thought she’d walked away from acting for good, it turned out she’d have to play the role of her life—as Austin’s smiling, happy wife—while inside her heart broke all over again.
* * *
Austin couldn’t go back inside the Hall and face the women. He didn’t want to face Mason either. He definitely couldn’t go find Heather—not until he’d gotten control of his anger. His head spinning with thoughts he couldn’t untangle, he found his feet leading him back to the bunkhouse. Time to tackle a job he’d dreaded; scraping the old linoleum off the kitchen floor. He grabbed a pry bar and a shovel from the toolshed and attacked the floor covering as if it was the devil himself. It felt good to hack and pry and push and peel what looked like four separate layers of linoleum up off the subfloor.
Why hadn’t Heather ever tracked him down to tell him about his son? How could she deprive him of the first twelve years of Richard’s life? How could she deprive Richard of his father? Had she married someone else?
As the questions piled up, he scraped harder at the floor. He ripped the layers off in chunks and tossed them aside. He had a son. A twelve-year-old son. And now he’d broken Ella’s heart, too.
He’d never forget the look on her face when she’d walked back into the Hall. Austin had made it so clear he didn’t want a wife, let alone a family. Did she think he was callous enough to get Heather pregnant and then leave her on purpose? That was far from the truth. He’d always been careful—even back then. There must have been some slip-up he hadn’t even realized he’d made. So why hadn’t she tracked him down?
His questions were running in circles, and pulling up the floor wouldn’t answer them. He tossed the pry bar aside, not caring when it bounced off the wall and left a mark. To hell with this. To hell with waiting until he’d calmed down. Why put off what had to be done?
Time to confront Heather. A quick phone call to Liam Turner told him where to find her—Rafters, a dive joint frequented by cowboys too old to enjoy the rowdier atmosphere at the Dancing Boot. He scowled when he heard the information, until Liam explained that she tended bar. By the time he reached the nondescript building in the middle of town, he was seething with anger all over again. His son deserved better than a barmaid for a mother and an absentee father. What the hell was Heather thinking? Inside he lingered by the door for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. This early in the day the customers were sparse. A couple of old men playing cards in the corner. Another man slumped over a mug of beer toward the back. Two or three younger cowboys at the bar where a pretty woman poured drinks.
Heather.
Her low cut blouse left little to the imagination. Her jeans hugged every curve. When she walked down the bar to fetch more glasses, the eyes of the cowboys followed her. Austin squashed his first thought—that Heather looked cheap—and allowed that if she depended on tips for her livelihood, she might as well make use of the assets God gave her. By his calculation, Heather had been barely eighteen when she had Richard. No wonder she had to take this kind of job to get by. He didn’t see a ring on her finger. Had she stayed single all this time?
His anger mounting again, he approached the bar. When Heather saw him, she hesitated, scowled, then kept moving swiftly as she refocused on her tasks. He took a seat at the end of the bar, leaving several empty stools between him and the cowboys. They turned to give the newcomer a thorough once over.
Austin nodded to them, but kept his attention on Heather, who after several moments made her way over, her lips pressed together in a thin line.
“So you’re back. What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“If you want to sit at my bar, you’d better drink.” Heather folded her arms over her chest.
“Fine. Whatever’s on tap.” He handed Heather a ten dollar bill. She took it ungraciously, rang him up and brought him a glass of beer and his change. Austin left several dollars on the bar. “I want to know what happened when I left.”
“That’s ancient history.”
“Not when our son turns up on my doorstep.”
Heather stilled.
“You didn’t know.” Austin watched her. “Richard didn’t tell you when he got home? That he came to find his father?”
“His father?”
“Yes. His father.”
She looked down. Shook her head slowly. “I’m working. I haven’t seen him this afternoon.” When Austin didn’t answer, she blazed, “He’s twelve. Plenty old enough to spend a few hours by himself.”
Austin tamped down his anger. “He came to find me. Nearly decked me. Can’t say I blame him for wanting to do that; he thinks I abandoned you. But you know that isn’t true.” He leaned over the bar. “And you have about thirty seconds to explain why you never told me.”
Heather’s face was tight with anger. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to interfere.”
Fury swelled within him. “Don’t you think the father of your son has a right to know about him?”
“You don’t understand anything,” Heather hissed at him. “I know exactly what you would have done if I’d told you.”
“What?”
“Tried to marry me! That’s the last thing I wanted. You’ve got a new woman now. Go make her miserable.”
She spun around, but Austin caught her arm and held it. They faced each other over the bar. “Are you saying I made you miserable? Because that’s not how I remember it.”
After a long moment her face softened. “Maybe not at the start, but later… I realized my mistake.”
“So you denied me my child because you didn’t love me anymore.” He let her go.
“No.” She shook her head. “I denied you because I loved someone else.”
Chapter 20
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Ella thought she’d prepared herself for Austin’s return, but she was wrong. She’d expected to assure an angry man that she’d go through with her commitment despite this new wrinkle; that she realized he wouldn’t want to help her have a child anymore; that she would fulfill her side of the bargain cheerfully, and then go on her way. But it hurt to think of a life without him, and it hurt worse to know that another woman had his child already.
Still, when Austin pulled up the side driveway to the bunkhouse in his truck late that afternoon, his expression was so bleak her heart contracted as she hurried to meet him. He sat in the driver’s seat for a long moment after he turned off the engine. When he finally climbed out, his face was set in deep grooves of pain.
“She didn’t love me,” he said finally. Ella’s stomach sank. If Heather could hurt his feelings so deeply, he must still have feelings for her to hurt. Was that why Austin was so against marriage? Had he secretly held a torch for this other woman all this time?
“She told you that?”
He nodded. “She kept Richard a secret because she loved someone else. She didn’t want me to get in her way.”
“Did she marry him?”
Austin shrugged. “She didn’t marry anyone. I guess it didn’t matter whether I was around or not. The guy didn’t love her. No one got what they wanted.”
His words hit her like a blow. No one got what they wanted. In other words, Austin had wanted Heather, and he’d been disappointed.
Now he had settled for a fake marriage to her.
* * *
Austin’s hands still shook with anger and pain. He could barely focus on Ella, let alone walk the thirty steps past her to the front door. Heather had deliberately kept him ignorant of their son’s existence, all because she’d cared for someone else. How could she be so incredibly selfish? Why would she do that to Richard—or to him? He’d loved her back then and she’d thrown that away. For what? A chance at being with a man who obviously couldn’t care less?
/> “Was it worth it?” he’d asked her.
“I’d do the same thing again.” She hadn’t even had the grace to be embarrassed. She’d met his gaze. Refused to look away first.
And he’d left the bar feeling somehow he was the one who should be ashamed.
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to.” Ella still watched him.
Austin tried to force his thoughts to the present. “I’ll call a lawyer. Figure out custody. I had no idea this was going to happen. I would never have gotten you to come here if I’d known.”
Ella closed her eyes and stood very still for a moment. Austin’s awareness shifted. Focused on her as he realized what he’d just said. Realized how she must have taken it.
“I’ll pack my things and be out of here in an hour.” She turned toward the steps.
Austin beat her there.
“Why would you do that?” He knew he gripped her arms too hard. Knew his voice sounded too harsh, but he couldn’t take this. Not on top of everything else. Ella was the one thing that felt right these days.
“Because you still love her.”
Austin laughed, a harsh sound. Ella tried to pull away from him, but he didn’t let her go. “Love her? I haven’t given her a second thought in twelve years. I don’t love her. But I do have a son with her and I can’t turn my back on him.”
“Of course not. That’s why I should go—to give you time to be with him and sort this out. To give you time with Heather to find out if the two of you have a future together.”
Austin knew he was going to lose Ella if he didn’t get his act together, and he couldn’t lose her—not now. He straightened. Pulled her into his arms. “I don’t have a future with Heather. And if you leave, I won’t have a future on this ranch, either. Please, Ella—I need you to stay. I need you to be my wife.”
“So you can keep the ranch,” she said, daring him to admit there was more to it than that.
Even if there was—and he wouldn’t admit that, not even to himself—now wasn’t the time to talk about it. “So I can keep the ranch,” he confirmed.
