“I was hoping to.” Maxine’s gaze encompassed them all.
“Good. I think we should all have dinner.”
“Oh! That would be great.”
Had Vivian seen the uncertainty in Maxine’s eyes? Jillian would swear some of the animosity she’d spotted on Vivian’s face earlier had faded.
“Wes, why don’t you and Jillian ride back together?”
Wait. What?
“Sure.” Wes turned to her. “I just need to load up my tack in the trailer.”
She glanced at Vivian, wondering what she was up to. She didn’t want to ride back with Wes. She wanted to keep her distance. Had to keep her distance. Why was that so hard? She knew what happened when she got in too deep.
Still, she found herself asking, “Do you need help?”
“Sure.”
She waved goodbye to Vivian and Maxine. Her heart began to beat harshly as she headed back to the barn.
“Are you going to come and watch me ride in the futurity, too?”
Her throat was so dry it was all she could do to croak, “Of course.”
“I hope he’s as quiet there as he was here.”
She knew she had to tell him. “He likes competing.”
“It sure seems that way.”
She stopped. Wes did, too, Dudley’s ears pricking forward as if curious what they were doing. She closed her eyes and silently told the horse to be patient.
“He likes performing in front of an audience.”
“You think so.”
“I know so.”
“How?” He glanced at his horse. “I mean, what signs do you look for to make you think that?”
She swallowed. Here it was, the moment she’d been waiting for. The moment she’d known was coming when she’d woken up next to him. “No signs.” She lifted her chin. “He told me he likes it.”
“Told you?”
She reached into her back pocket, fished out one of the business cards she always carried with her. “Read this.”
He glanced at the card. “I don’t need this. I know who you are.”
“Read what it says.”
His confusion was evident, but he did as she asked. “‘Jillian Thacker, animal communicator.’” Their gazes connected. “Animal communicator?”
Her heart had taken off like the horses his mom raced. “I can talk to them, Wes.”
“Talk to who?”
“Animals.”
His eyes widened so quickly it would have been comical if this hadn’t been Wes standing in front of her, if she hadn’t seen the exact same look on other faces throughout her life. If that look didn’t usually come from men...right before they laughed or called her crazy or flat-out refused to believe her.
“Talk.”
She nodded.
“As in actually converse with them?”
“Not exactly. They shoot me images, pictures of what’s in their minds, like a TV screen. For instance, when Dudley came out of the arena, I asked if he was happy and he shot me pictures of the audience. I interpreted that to mean he liked being watched.”
Wes took off his cowboy hat and ran his fingers through his hair. Dudley nudged him, almost as if silently trying to reassure him what she said was true, but she could tell by the look in Wes’s eyes that he wasn’t sure what to think.
“That’s crazy.” She heard him mutter.
Of course it was. That was what people always thought. Well, okay, not everyone. Occasionally she’d meet someone who believed in her gifts, instantly believed, but those people were few and far between.
“I know it sounds completely incredible, but just think about it, Wes. I’ve been helpful to you, haven’t I? When you were having trouble with that lead, I told you it was because Dudley was sore. I knew that because of my gift, although I didn’t know if he had bone pain or muscle pain. I just knew something was up, and I was right, wasn’t I?”
He peered down at her intently, and she could see it happening, see him fight it. He didn’t want to believe her. No. That wasn’t it. He could believe her if he wanted to; he just didn’t possess the faith it took to believe in things you couldn’t see.
Such a disappointment.
She’d known it was possible, had hoped that because he was a horse person it might be different, but she should have known better. At least when Jason had broken up with her, it hadn’t been because of her gifts. He’d simply cheated on her—not that it made any difference. Loss was loss, and for her, because of her abilities, that loss hurt twenty times worse than it did for a normal person. At least, that was what she’d reasoned out over the years.
“You have been helpful.” She heard him say. “I just have a hard time believing it’s because of secret signals or invisible voodoo.”
Why wasn’t she surprised?
“But I guess it doesn’t matter.” She saw him take a deep breath, saw him force a smile. “You’re good with horses. I can’t deny that.” He moved closer. “I missed you this week.”
She stepped back. It mattered to her, damn it. She hadn’t realized exactly how much until that moment when she felt the breath slide out of her. She wanted him to believe. In her. In her gifts.
Maybe you can bring him around.
Maybe she could, and maybe she couldn’t, and if it didn’t work out, what then? More crushing disappointment? More horrible days and long nights mourning the loss of yet another lover. No thanks. She’d been right to pull back from him. It’d been smart to keep him at a distance. She just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
“I’ve missed you, too, Wes. Missed talking to my friend.”
She hadn’t meant to put the emphasis on that last word, but perhaps it was for the best. He’d received the message loud and clear.
“I see.”
She could tell her stepping back from him had stung, could tell he wasn’t happy, could tell she’d wounded him.
“It’s not you.” She looked down at the ground for a moment, trying to sort through her thoughts. “It’s me.” She had to take a deep breath before she could look him in the eyes. “I’m not like a normal person. I feel things. Deeply. Too deeply. Before I met you, I’d decided to never get into a relationship again.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Not for me, it’s not.” She lifted her head. “You might not believe in my gifts, but I know what I feel. I know what I see, too. But most of all, I know what it does to me when a relationship goes south. I won’t let that happen with us.”
She expected him to get angry, maybe even to argue with her, but he’d never been one to force his will on others, not with horses, not with his dog and clearly not with people, either.
“Goodbye, Wes.” She reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I’ll catch a ride home with your mom after all.”
She turned away before she could change her mind or before she did something stupid...like tell him that walking away from him was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do.
Chapter Eighteen
Damn it.
What the hell had happened? One minute she was congratulating him on a good ride and the next she was breaking up with him.
He banged his steering wheel with his fist.
His mood didn’t improve any when he learned Maxine’s parents had accepted his mom’s invitation to dinner. Great. The last thing he felt like doing was socializing. He’d met them once before when he’d gone over to their house to pick up Maggie, and they’d made it clear they thought he’d somehow done their daughter wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth, something he worked to set straight the moment they were all seated in his mom’s family room, Maggie held in his mother’s arms.
“Look,” he said. “I want you two to know that I had no idea Maxine was pregnant. Granted, she tried to call me, and I never called her back, but at no time did she tell me she was carrying my child.”
It might have been a blunt thing to say, especially since they’d all just sat down, but he’d needed to
get things out in the open.
They were an older couple. Tom’s gray hair was thinning in the shape of a U, and Dianne sported shoulder-length brown hair. They both shot their daughter a look.
“Is this true, Maxine?” Dianne asked.
It seemed Maxine hadn’t expected the truth to come out, at least not right away. “Yes.”
“For the love of God, Max, why didn’t you tell him?”
Maxine wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, and for the first time Wes wondered if she’d simply been overwhelmed by it all.
“I wasn’t sure it was his,” Maxine finally answered.
Her dad sank back on the couch. Dianne’s cheeks filled with color, as if she was embarrassed.
“I thought it would be best to wait and see.” She glanced at her daughter. “And then afterward I thought maybe it would be better to just give Maggie over to him to be raised.”
“Dear Lord,” Dianne said. She met Wes’s eyes. “It appears I owe you an apology.”
He lifted a hand. “No, no. It’s all right.”
“No, we do.” She glanced at her husband. “We haven’t been very friendly toward you, because we thought you dumped our daughter when she got pregnant.”
“Wes would never do something like that,” Vivian interjected.
“I see that now,” Tom said, holding out his hand toward Wes.
From that point forward, Tom and Dianne were remarkably nice. They were clearly disappointed with their daughter, and Wes suspected there would be words later, but at least they seemed to accept that he wasn’t some kind of irresponsible dilettante.
“Thanks for coming to my defense,” Wes whispered to his mother as he scraped the remains of his dinner off his plate and into a garbage compactor. Cowboy whined softly, as if reminding Wes that he didn’t need to waste all that good food. “Not a chance, buddy,” he told the dog.
“Are you kidding?” his mom said, rinsing off a plate and sticking it in the dishwasher. She could have easily afforded a maid, but his mom wasn’t that type, something Wes had always admired about her. “It was all I could do not to throttle that woman when I realized what she’d allowed her parents to think,” she added.
“Me, too.” He handed his mom a plate. “I need to talk to her, though. We need to sort out how we’re going to work all this out.” He rested his hands on the counter. So much chaos in his life. Maybe it was for the best that Jillian didn’t want to see him anymore.
“Poor baby.”
The comment made him look up.
His mom stared at him sympathetically. “You’re under a lot of pressure.”
“That’s an understatement.”
She held his gaze through a veil of steam that rose up from the tap water. The sound of the running tap ensured their words wouldn’t be overheard. “What happened between you and Jillian?”
The plate he’d been holding clattered to the counter. They both reached for it at the same time.
“Everything all right in there?” Dianne called.
“Fine,” his mom called back, but she still stared at him in question, though she’d managed to rescue the plate from his clumsy fingers.
“Clearly, something did because she practically threw herself into my car.”
He didn’t really want to talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Nothing happened,” he hedged. “She just changed her mind about riding home with me.”
His mom shut off the water and turned to face him. “Wesley Landon, don’t try to brush my question off.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know the two of you were intimate.”
It was crazy that his cheeks could still turn bright red. “Mom!”
“I’m not a fool. And I was happy for you. The two of you are perfect for each other.”
He shook his head. “She talks to animals.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Mariah told me weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
His mom snorted. “Why? When I know you don’t believe in that kind of thing?”
He opened his mouth only to clap it closed again. She was right.
“Did you call her a quack?”
“Of course not,” he replied loudly.
“So what happened?”
Wes almost forced her to drop the topic, but something made him consider the question. Aside from Zach, his mom was his closest friend. If he couldn’t confide in her, there was nobody he could talk to right away...and suddenly he wanted to talk.
“She’s afraid.”
His mom snorted. “Who isn’t?”
“She mentioned being different. Said she feels things more deeply than a normal person—whatever that means.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Because she made it clear she didn’t want to see me anymore.”
“And you let her walk away.”
“I had no choice.”
“Son, you always have a choice.”
He was taller than his mom. A lot taller. In that moment he wished he were a little boy again, one without all the fears of an adult.
“Trust your heart, honey.”
“It’s not my heart that’s the problem.”
His mom’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “No?”
He realized then just how much he cared for Jillian. “No.”
She pulled him in tight, but only for a moment, because she stepped back and slapped him on the arm. “Talk to Jillian. But first settle things between you and Maxine. Take her out on the back porch. I have a feeling things will be a lot clearer once you two get things ironed out.”
He hoped so. Lord, how he hoped so.
“I’ll send her out to you.”
He nodded, but he’d have been lying if he said he wasn’t nervous as he waited by the pool. His mom had turned on the lights. Lawn sconces cast a pearlescent glow over the granite landscape.
“Wow. This is the life.”
He hadn’t even heard her slip through the door. Not surprising. He’d been so deep in thought—thinking about Jillian and her “gifts”—that he probably wouldn’t have heard a 747 landing.
“My mom has good taste.”
“She’s nice, too.”
Funny, it was the first time he noticed what Maxine had worn. A flimsy sundress that would have been more appropriate at a pool party than a dinner. She looked cold, not surprisingly. It was the end of February, and this close to the ocean it could get chilly fast.
“Do you need a jacket or something?”
“No. I’m fine.”
She looked pretty standing there by the pool. It reminded him of the first night they’d met. They’d both been a little tipsy and she’d been completely charming, and if he were honest with himself, he’d been looking for some company. The night of the Turf Club dinner had been tough to bear without his dad. It’d been the first time they’d been to a trackside function without him, and if it had been hard on him, it had been even harder on his mom. He’d been searching for a way to escape and he’d found it in Maxine’s arms.
“That first night we met, you were hoping to net a big fish, weren’t you?”
A quick glance revealed her mouth opening and closing a few times before she said, “I beg your pardon?”
“You were thinking I was some rich racehorse owner living off his family’s money.”
He saw her look away, embarrassed.
“It’s okay. You don’t need to answer. I know you hooked up with Kanal Khuruna the same week you went home with me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Small world, plus Kanal told me. I didn’t believe him at first, but I do now, especially after you admitted you didn’t know who the baby’s father was until you saw her eyes.”
They weren’t dark brown. Maggie’s skin was fair. Maxine hadn’t needed a DNA test to know he was the father.
“I’m sorry, Wes. Sorry about everything.”
Funny, but he believed her. “I don’t have a lot of money.”
She lifted her chin up and he could tell she was insulted. “This isn’t about about money. I was scared. Terrified, really. I never planned to get pregnant. Sure, I was hoping to meet someone nice that night, but I really wasn’t trying to snag a rich guy.”
“I still wish you’d told me you were pregnant.”
“I would have if you’d called me back.”
“I thought you were calling to hook up again.”
“As if. You’d made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“You make me sound like a jerk.”
“You were being a jerk.”
“Not when you consider I thought you were with Kanal and that all you were after was money.”
“You still could have called me back.”
He gulped back his anger. She had a point. Damn it.
“Look, it’s all water under the bridge right now. Let’s just focus on the future, okay?”
He saw her take a few deep breaths herself. “Fine. How do you want to work this?”
“I’m hoping you’ll give Maggie to me and my mom to raise. Your parents are older. I can’t imagine them wanting to raise another child, but I don’t know—maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not. I just know this is a good place to raise a kid. I was happy here growing up. I’m sure Maggie will be, too.”
She licked her lips. He knew she contemplated her options. Knew she was weighing out the pros and cons of being footloose and fancy-free, of saddling him with the burden of a child, not that Maggie would ever be a burden to him.
“I’ll think about it.”
It was more than he’d hoped for, and the relief he felt was instantaneous. “Okay, good.”
He motioned toward the house. “You look like you’re freezing. We should probably get back inside.”
She didn’t say another word. He didn’t, either. He was too busy thinking about how much his life had changed, and how he somehow knew what Maxine’s decision would be.
Cowboy greeted him when he slipped back inside. He bent down to scratch the dog’s black-and-white head. “Maybe I’m the psychic now, Cowboy.”
Kissed by a Cowboy Page 14
