The Prodigal Wife

by Susan Fox

  “Elisa’s taken our coffee to the den.”

  Lainey’s momentary relief that the meal was finally done was swallowed up by renewed anxiety as she eased back her chair to stand. Apparently Gabe meant to let her have the talk she wanted, but now that the time had come, she was back to worrying that he’d reject everything she had to say.

  Lainey stood and then paused, glancing up at him. “I need to get my briefcase.”

  The dark flicker in his gaze held hers. “If it’s papers, I’m not interested.” The dark flicker vanished because his gaze shifted and he waited for her to precede him out of the room. Once they were through the doors she hesitated, not certain where the room was.

  As if he’d remembered that, Gabe directed her along the edge of the large living room to a hall in the east wing that brought them quickly to the den. French doors on the outside wall opened to a wide patio that was ringed with enough trees to shade the patio stones in the heat of the day.

  All the other walls in the room were lined floor to ceiling with built-in bookcases. Among the books and stock magazines neatly stored on the many shelves were Native American artifacts and pieces of cowboy art. The furniture was heavy and masculine, and a few brightly colored Mexican throw rugs lay on the floor atop a carpet made up of a small variety of dark shades that wouldn’t show much of what might get tracked in during a workday.

  Lainey might have felt comfortable in the large room and taken several minutes to more closely examine several of the pieces in the bookcases if anyone but Gabe had owned the room. Hesitantly she sat down on one of the two leather wing chairs he indicated in front of the big desk. The coffee tray was on the small table between her chair and his, so she looked over at him as he was sitting down.

  “Pour for both of us, if you like,” he said, and settled back to watch her fill their cups.

  She handed the first cup to him, then poured one for herself to soothe her dry mouth. When she’d finished, she slid back only slightly in the big chair to take a sip before she set the cup back down on the table. Weary of the wait but so anxious about it that she was on the verge of losing her nerve, she plunged in.

  “I’m not sure where to start, but there are several things you deserve to hear.”

  Now she braved a look at him and saw him leaning back calmly, studying her face. “Start with your plans for July.”

  The gravelly request caught her off guard. He’d made it sound like a request, though he’d worded it as a demand. July was the month they’d been married five years ago. According to her father’s will, July was the month that sole control of Talbot Ranch would revert to her if she’d stayed married to Gabe for a full five years.

  “I’m not here about who’ll control Talbot Ranch or what will happen in July with this marriage. I’m here to apologize and, if you’re interested, to explain why I’ve acted the way I have.”

  “I’m not interested in pretty apologies. What I’m interested in are your plans for July. Will you file for divorce?”

  Lainey couldn’t mistake the iron will beneath his words. Or the fine thread of anger mixed in. But why would divorce even be a question after what she’d done to him all these years? As far as she was concerned, divorce was a given. What Gabe didn’t know was that she’d found out about what he’d done for Talbot Ranch and she planned to do something about it.

  “I’ve just recently found out that Talbot Ranch was virtually bankrupt when you took over,” she began, “and it looks like you saved it single-handedly in spite of what I did to you. I suspect you covered my inheritance taxes out of your own pocket when I thought they’d come from my father’s investments.”

  She paused, but his stony expression told her nothing. “And since the quarterly checks I thought were from profits due me from Talbot Ranch must also have been paid out of your private accounts, I owe you a substantial amount of money in addition to a complete apology.”

  Lainey finished briskly with, “On the subject of July, I’m certain you can’t possibly want to stay married a second longer than you agreed to.”

  “Why’s that?”

  The sudden comeback was unexpected, and she sat there a moment until she realized why. This was the opening for her to finally make the “pretty apology” he kept referring to so skeptically.

  “As I’ve said—”

  “I made a vow,” he said, bluntly cutting her off, “‘till death do us part.”’

  The quiet words were like a sudden blow and Lainey felt the punch so vividly that it stole her breath. Her brain registered the shock, then she felt a new one when she belatedly realized the significance of what he’d just said.

  I made a vow…

  A vow made by a man whose handshake was as dependable as the sunrise; a vow made by a man whose words could be carved in granite and put in a museum.

  Till death do us part…

  “Surely you didn’t…” Her voice trailed away as the breathless feeling affected her again. “There’s no reason for you to sacrifice…”

  The right words wouldn’t seem to come to her, but however shocked and rattled she was by what he’d said, Gabe was sitting back comfortably, his dark eyes intense as he watched everything about her and appeared to be waiting for her to finish what she was struggling to say.

  “It was a marriage yes, but not a real marriage,” she tried again. “A—a business deal to help protect my inheritance, not a real…marriage?” The question she’d subconsciously put on the word invited an answer she hadn’t wanted to ask—didn’t want!—and her nerves began to jump and twist and scream.

  Gabe seemed to know all that, so he let the wild silence stretch before he spoke, and the wait seemed to underscore every word that fell on her like the blow of a rock chisel on that museum-worthy piece of granite.

  “No business deal I’ve ever made came with a ‘till death’ pledge before a judge,” he drawled in a low, rough voice, “or a wedding ring. Or a woman’s signature next to mine on a marriage license.”

  The flash of heat that went through her all the way from her hairline to her feet scrambled her brain. She tried to think of something to say to that, some way to counter the grim statement he’d just made.

  “You can’t mean that—you can’t really want me.” Another thought saved her and she added hastily, “Is this a way to get back at me for…what I’ve done to you all these years?”

  She stared at him in the long silence while shock after shock thrummed through her and pounded home the knowledge that Gabriel Patton really did aim to stay married to her. There was no mistaking the flinty look in his eyes as anything but resolve.

  “What did you think I was supposed to get?” he asked then, and she felt her heart quiver.

  She sealed her lips firmly together, loathe to say the words a wife. And he hadn’t answered her question about getting back at her.

  “I was denied the benefits and privileges of the five year marriage I agreed to make,” he went on in that same low, gravelly drawl that suddenly seemed more masculine growl than speech. “The deal I made wasn’t satisfied.”

  Her heart began to flutter quicker and quicker. An even worse nightmare than facing Gabe and enduring whatever awful things he might say to her, was to face him and hear this.

  “I’m sorry for that,” she said hoarsely, “but it’s—it’s not realistic to think that staying married for another five years will satisfy anything.”

  “Have you made plans with another man?”

  She couldn’t help the flush of heat that surged into her face. “Of course not.”

  “So the man your mother chose for you didn’t make it past dinner?”

  The flush of heat suddenly became a scorching mask and the guilt she already felt about that subject bore down more heavily. “If you know about him, then you know there was nothing but dinner. Ever. And there were two other couples present.”

  Lainey couldn’t bear the stern gaze that stared fixedly into hers as if trying to see the truth, but she didn’
t dare look away. She should rail at him for hiring an investigator to spy on her, but after what she’d done to shut him so completely out of her life, she could hardly blame him.

  Thank God she’d done nothing that could be considered unfaithful, but the fact that Gabe had known about it deepened her shame. She’d never been romantically attracted to the man her mother had coerced her into having dinner with, and she’d felt so guilty about that one time that she’d never let Sondra maneuver her into another date with anyone else.

  “I shouldn’t have gone out with anyone for any reason,” she admitted quietly. “I apologize for that, too.”

  “So you’d have no distractions while you live up to your vows?”

  Lainey stared at him helplessly. As intense as her crush on Gabe had once been, he’d been mostly a stranger to her. And now he was not only still a stranger, but a stranger who would naturally feel no small amount of ill will toward her. She’d be a fool to give him a chance like that. He could make mincemeat of her.

  “I don’t think that’s what either of us really wants,” she said shakily.

  “There’s no ‘us’ in that. Just you.”

  The way he’d said “just you” somehow emphasized what he didn’t say: she’d gotten all the benefits of her father’s will—what would actually amount to several million dollars worth of benefits—without giving Gabe a single thing in exchange but trouble and public embarrassment. It was obvious he didn’t consider her offer of financial compensation to be enough to satisfy him.

  But she had to remember that everyone in their part of Texas had known that they’d married, so it followed that everyone had to have noticed that she’d never lived a moment with Gabe as his wife. And because neither of them had ever lived as hermits, the gossip about them must have been intense.

  She’d let old friendships drift to protect herself from hearing it, but Gabe had lived here knowing it was swirling around him, though she doubted anyone would have dared to repeat it to his face.

  The guilt she’d felt these last weeks was suddenly nothing compared to the guilt she felt now. Nausea rose like a tidal wave as she felt the jaws of a trap snap tighter and tighter on her conscience.

  Because she’d deprived Gabe of the marriage he’d bargained for, he was insisting that she live up to her vows and continue it. But the idea was terrifying. It wasn’t possible to have a normal marriage with him now, not after five whole years of hateful estrangement.

  “Please, Gabe,” she croaked, but he spoke almost before she’d finished saying the short syllable of his name.

  “I want heirs.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HEIRS…

  Lainey felt the room tip and she sat back deeper in the chair to steady herself. He meant children. More than one.

  One child was beyond comprehension, but more than one was mind-blowing. She’d been staring at Gabe, but she hadn’t really been seeing his stony expression or the no-nonsense glitter in his eyes. She’d been staring at the sudden mental flash of children. Beautiful dark-haired toddlers with dark eyes…more than one toddler, more than two…at intervals of not much more than a year or two apart.

  Gabe’s gruff voice made the picture fade.

  “If you’d stayed, you could have done your part in Talbot’s comeback. We’d be playin’ with our babies tonight.”

  Gabe’s stony expression was tempered by a faint softening in his gaze when he’d said our babies that was gone the second after it showed. She’d almost missed it.

  After a lifetime with her mother Lainey recognized emotional manipulation, but this wasn’t precisely that because it was the simple truth. If she’d stayed, she had no doubt things would have worked out somehow.

  After all, though her heart had been filled with silly adolescent fantasies about Gabe that no flesh-and-blood man could ever live up to, she’d once thought he was the only man she’d ever love. If she’d not been so shocked by her father’s death and hurt by his will, having Gabriel Patton handed to her so easily would have been the fulfillment of her fondest romantic hope.

  So yes, they could have been playing with their children tonight in peace. The question of what happened in July or the state of their marriage would have long since been determined.

  Her father would have expected his daughter to pull her own weight in both the saving of Talbot Ranch and her marriage. The fact that he hadn’t spelled it out in the will made Lainey realize her father had taken her respect for his wishes and her integrity so for granted that he’d seen no reason to insult her by putting those specifics in writing.

  If it was possible, her regret over it all deepened into a heavier feeling of heartsickness than ever. The brief glimpse of softness in Gabe’s eyes just now when he’d mentioned babies impacted her in a new way then.

  Of course Gabe Patton would want a family. He didn’t have any now, and hadn’t since he’d been in his midteens. He’d been nearing his late twenties when he’d married her, so he was at least thirty-two or thirty-three by now. It shamed her to realize she didn’t remember his birth date, but what nicked her heart was the reminder that he’d been waiting a long time to have someone to share his life with.

  She’d not only deprived him of that, but his marriage to her had prevented him from finding someone more worthy to marry.

  Lainey stared over at him, helpless to look away from this self-sufficient, sometimes arrogant man who was so tough and hard-edged. There was no reason, just by looking at him, to think anything could hurt him or that there was anything soft or vulnerable in him at all. And yet she felt it suddenly, in spite of his harshness.

  Her father had respected Gabe and admired what he’d achieved, and Gabe had considered his much older neighbor a trusted friend. Neither man could have seriously figured the will would be needed. John Talbot had simply taken a precaution to safeguard Lainey against her mother’s manipulations until she’d had time to achieve full independence from Sondra’s demands and returned to Talbot Ranch. She was certain now, knowing her father, that he would have dropped the conditions on her inheritance the moment she had.

  In the meantime, he must have expected to recover Talbot wealth himself but before he could get very far, his sudden death had saddled Gabe with a commitment to both a rebellious wife and a monumental financial challenge.

  And of course, that rebellious wife had stupidly abandoned it all to him.

  Somehow Lainey found the courage to ask, “If you knew Talbot was bankrupt before we went through with the ceremony, why didn’t you just refuse to marry me? You could surely tell by then that I didn’t deserve to get anything, much less waste a moment of your time.”

  Belatedly she remembered that Gabriel Patton didn’t operate that way. His word was the law he lived by. Whether she’d deserved anything wasn’t the issue. He’d given his word.

  She shrank inwardly from the unintentional insult and rushed out with, “I didn’t ask the question to offend you.” The tense silence didn’t last long.

  “Your daddy trusted me to look out for you in case he couldn’t,” he said somberly, but she saw no sign that her question had bothered him. “A man works all his life to leave something he’s proud of for his kids and his kids’ kids. John wanted you to keep every acre and dime of Talbot.”

  Emotion virtually choked her as she sensed the deeper part of what he’d said. Just as John Talbot had wanted to pass on his life’s work to her, Gabriel Patton would want to pass on what he’d built to his children. The only inheritance he’d gotten had been an old saddle and a box of clothes.

  He’d bargained for a wife and children of his own and she’d thwarted that. She’d doomed any chance of happiness they might have had, and it was only fair to not tie up any more of Gabe’s time. There were multitudes of women more worthy of him than she was.

  “You’ve seen what I can be like,” she tried again. “I’m sure the last thing that makes sense is for you to have children with a woman who’s behaved as I have.”

 
She felt a small quiver of hope because she’d made what she thought was a sound point, since there could be no way now for their marriage to work. But Gabe spoke again and somehow his words made it even more impossible for her to think of wiggling out of this.

  “Today you said you were sorry, that you’d grovel if that’s what it took.” His stony expression didn’t change by so much as the faintest shadow. “Easy to say.”

  He rose from his chair then walked around the desk to the French doors behind it that opened onto the patio. He stopped a moment to take down his black Stetson from where he’d upended it on a nearby shelf, then reached for the door lever.

  “I’ll be out till full dark. I reckon we’ll find out quick whether you take after John or Sondra.”

  Gabe opened the door and only then did he look back at her. His dark eyes glittered with something Lainey wasn’t sure she could define at first as anything but cool intensity.

  But everywhere his gaze wandered in that scattering of seconds, heat trailed over her skin. It was a look that was blatantly possessive. Whatever he’d said about who she “took after,” she sensed this wasn’t the end for him, whatever she chose to do. Any doubt about that was instantly made clear.

  “We would have shared the same bed on our wedding night,” he said, his low drawl so quiet and gruff that it was almost smoky. “If your word means anything now, tell Elisa to put your things where I sleep.”

  If Lainey had been standing, she would have fainted. As it was, it was a miracle she didn’t fall out of her chair. She stared, dazed as he went out and pulled the door closed behind him before he stepped away from the glass to start in the direction of the barns.

  She could barely get a full breath as she felt the fresh weight of Gabe’s expectations fall on her like hundred-pound rocks.

  If your word means anything…