The Prodigal Wife

by Susan Fox

  Even a job had been difficult to pursue because Sondra’s troubles and constant ailments made it difficult for Lainey to both find a job she liked and to be dependable once she was hired. Because finding substitute help had been eternally frustrating—mostly because her mother was so rude to them—Lainey had eventually given up on the idea of a job.

  Sondra’s problems had been frustrating to deal with. Despite Lainey’s objections, Sondra had chosen doctors who seemed more inclined to take orders from her rather than stand behind the need for specific tests to form their own diagnoses and treatment recommendations.

  Then last year, Sondra had gone into a steady emotional decline, until her sudden death in a car accident just after the first of the year had ended it all.

  Lainey still wondered if her mother’s troubles had been rooted in bitterness and guilt, or if they’d been the result of some sort of mental illness that had impaired her judgment. Since Sondra had scorned counseling of any kind, Lainey figured she’d never know.

  After the wreck, Lainey had begun to start the search for a job, but working day in and day out in a climate-controlled building had surprisingly little appeal. She’d actually thought more than once about swallowing her pride and coming home to live on Talbot. But by then she’d started to go through her mother’s personal papers and had rapidly concluded that making plans to return to Texas—at least for a while—was unavoidable.

  And now Gabe expected her to stay and finally live up to her vows. If things went well between them, the bonus would be that she’d finally get to live the kind of life she’d missed and preferred to anything else.

  In the meantime, whatever happened with Gabe, she’d enjoy living on a ranch again. And since some of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of ranching had to do with horses, she was eager to get down to the stable and choose a mount.

  Gabe finally set aside the paper. He’d silently offered it to her earlier, but she’d declined, too focused on her thoughts to concentrate on the news or markets. When he glanced her way and saw she was finished eating, he started to rise. She did too before he could make the gentlemanly gesture of pulling out her chair.

  “I need to put my hair up,” she told him then went to the small bathroom just off the hall from the kitchen.

  After quickly tying her hair up, she generously applied sunblock and slid the tube into her back jeans pocket. Lainey wasn’t certain what to expect that morning except that she didn’t want to slow Gabe down any more than necessary. She got her hat and joined him on the back patio for the walk to the barns.

  Instead of starting out on horseback, they took Gabe’s pickup for a long tour of several of the stock tanks and windmills farthest from the headquarters. They stopped to tinker with a couple, checked one of the metal tanks for a leak that had been repaired the week before, then came back to the stable at midmorning.

  Lainey was uneasy with the ongoing silence between them. Gabe had only spoken when absolutely necessary, and nothing he’d said had been remotely personal. She was wondering whether to initiate conversation when they got back to the stable at the headquarters, but Gabe seemed to loosen up once they were inside.

  “The calmest horse I’ve got with the smoothest gait is that little sorrel in the fourth stall.” Now he glanced her way. “You can chose any horse you want, but that’d be my pick until you get used to riding again.”

  They’d stopped in front of the stall where Gabe’s black gelding was. He reached for a bridle and opened the stall gate.

  “If you want to saddle her yourself, the one on the hay bale by her stall’ll do.”

  The black gelding stepped forward and Gabe efficiently put the bridle on the horse before he led him out. Lainey walked on to the sorrel’s stall and opened the gate to take a few moments to get acquainted with the pretty mare before she slipped the bridle on then led her out for a quick grooming.

  The familiar tasks were satisfying, and when she was finished, she took another moment to pet the mare. As Gabe led his gelding past, Lainey started after him with the mare and fell into step beside him.

  “You didn’t mention her name,” Lainey said, eager to get him to talk.

  He glanced her way briefly before he faced forward. “You one who needs to know names first?”

  “You don’t?”

  “Doll,” he said gruffly, and Lainey got the impression that the name wasn’t one he was comfortable telling her. His dark eyes shifted back to hers, as if he knew what she’d ask next. “As in, ‘She’s a doll.’ Sweet-tempered, gracious.”

  “Did you name her that?”

  “She’s got a registered name. Someone referred to her that way, and it stuck.”

  “Ah.”

  Now she saw the faint twinkle show in his dark eyes and smiled. “Was that someone you?”

  He looked away from her again. “It’s not seemly to ask a man if he’s got a little whimsy in his soul,” he said as they neared the far doors. His profile was stern again, but she suddenly sensed that there might be a fair amount of whimsy in Gabriel Patton. It fit the softness she sometimes got a glimpse of.

  “What about your black? What do you call him?”

  “Duke when he acts it. Knothead when he doesn’t.”

  Lainey smiled, not surprised. “Wouldn’t do for the boss to ride a horse with a wimpy name.”

  “See you remember that.” Now he slanted her a mock-stern glance.

  “Who usually rides Doll?”

  “Kids and city folk. Usually worked by one of the men to keep her active…how come you’re so inquisitive?”

  Lainey came right back with, “You haven’t been much for conversation this morning. Since I thought we were going to get to know each other…” She let her sentence fade.

  “Lots of ways to get to know someone.”

  The subject was closing again—he was closing off again—and she didn’t want to allow it.

  “I thought this would be a crash course.”

  They stepped out in the sun and Gabe turned to check his cinch. He gathered the reins, then mounted. “Folks can fool you with talk. Actions speak truer.”

  “Do you mean me?” she asked, still on the ground looking up at him.

  “That’s an observation of human nature.”

  Her spirits sank a little. “I don’t think so. You mean me.”

  Gabe leaned forward a bit to rest a forearm on the saddle horn and looked down at her. “That’s the other hazard,” he said bluntly. “Too much talk, and things are bound to get said that aren’t meant.”

  “When that happens, there should be more talk until both parties are clear.”

  His gaze sharpened to probe hers. “You’re eager to prove yourself. Or convince me of something.”

  That was certainly true, but she couldn’t tell whether he understood that or not, or whether he approved. And she couldn’t have missed the message that he was far from trusting her.

  “If you’d done what I have, what would you want to do?”

  His gaze shifted away as he straightened and switched the reins to his right hand. He wasn’t going to answer and it frustrated her, so she pressed on quietly.

  “There’ve been too many hard feelings between us to avoid talking about them now. Or just talking, getting to know each other.”

  His gaze came back down to hers. “That’s true, Mrs. Patton, but just now we need to concentrate on checking a herd that needs to be moved before noon.” He nodded toward the mare. “If you’re going along, best mount up.”

  With that the black stepped forward, clearly impatient because Gabe held him to a walk to give her a few moments to catch up. Stung by this new taste of implacability, Lainey watched him go then turned to the mare. A hefty measure of the pleasure of finally being able to ride that morning had dimmed.

  The rest of the day was as silent between them as the morning had been. Lainey knew Gabe was a laconic man, but as the afternoon went on, his silence felt more and more like retribution. She could hard
ly blame him.

  Because she’d turned into a bitter, vengeful shrew who’d done spiteful things to get back at him, she couldn’t expect Gabe to easily set aside what she’d done to him or be able to easily resist the temptation of doing to her what she’d done to him.

  Because he’d been so silent today, she’d been unable to keep from mentally reliving the five years of silence she’d inflicted on him. She’d had most of the day to remember the times she’d rebuffed the requests for contact that he’d sent to her lawyer. She’d never forget each and every letter and package he’d mailed at holidays or on her birthdays, along with a handful of others sent at other times that she’d refused to open.

  There were so many things she wished she could do over or somehow erase from everyone’s memory. Once or twice might not have been so bad, but she’d done it repeatedly for almost five whole years. It jolted her to think about how long five years was, and how long she’d been so hateful. She’d lived those years in a kind of delusion, and shuddered to think about how much longer she might have gone on had her mother not died. Her confidence in her judgment had been shaken from top to bottom, and Lainey felt incapable of making the right choices now. Particularly about the marriage Gabe expected of her.

  For as long as she lived she’d never say or do, or even think, spitefully about anyone for any reason. The vengeful temper and self-righteous pride she’d been so filled with had been brutally crushed. The guilt she felt about it all had been burning inside her for weeks now and still it burned.

  They drove back to the house just before supper. After moving cattle that morning, they’d spent the rest of the day going from task to task on the ranch, using the pickup most of the time. Lainey suspected Gabe was trying to minimize her time on horseback because she wasn’t used to it, though his preference might have been to be in the saddle the whole day.

  And he’d kept her out of the heat for long stretches. Though Lainey hadn’t complained, Gabe seemed to know it bothered her. She doubted very much that in the normal course of his day Gabe would have kept the pickup’s air-conditioning on high. In fact, she remembered he’d often driven his cars and his pickups with the windows down because he loved being outdoors.

  Elisa had the meal on the table when they came in, which was an hour earlier than last night. Gabe might be in the habit of showering before he’d sat down to the evening meal so since they only took time to wash up, it was clear he must have altered his routine to accommodate her.

  After a day in the outdoors, Lainey was ravenous. She all but inhaled her food, drinking two big glasses of ice water before a full stomach and the cool house began to revive her a bit. Gabe insisted she shower while he checked messages, so Lainey grabbed a set of clean clothes and shut herself in the bathroom.

  The hot shower soothed most of her aches, and afterward she used a blow-dryer on her hair. She lightly applied aloe vera to the places on her face that had gone pink wherever she’d sweated or rubbed off her sunblock, before she put on a bit of makeup. Lainey had just dressed in the denim skirt and blue blouse she’d brought in with her and stepped out of the bathroom, when Gabe walked in from the hall.

  She’d decided to go barefoot the rest of the evening, but when she saw the faint gleam that came into Gabe’s gaze as it slid down the front of her and fixed on her bare feet, she felt self-conscious about the choice.

  His gruff, “Very pretty feet, Mrs. Patton,” was the last comment she expected. But then his gaze came slowly back up, lingering faintly here and there to set off small flashes of heat before it connected with hers.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “Elisa’s got coffee in the den, if you want some.”

  Lainey nodded, hoping for something more, but Gabe strode on to the big closet. She watched him all the way there, disrupted by another small hit-and-run conversation. And his use of the words Mrs. Patton. No one looking at the two of them or listening to a stray bit of what they’d said to each other that day, would have been able to identify her as Mrs. Patton.

  The nettle of hurt she felt about that surprised her. She hadn’t thought of herself at all in terms of being Mrs. Patton, but it stunned her to realize that not only had her thinking changed, but that she might actually want to be Mrs. Patton.

  Gabe had addressed her that way as if it was a long-standing truth for him. He’d already made clear that he expected everything of her that the title represented. And yet once he’d kissed her last night, he’d treated her with little more familiarly than he might a houseguest he was considerate of but wasn’t too interested in.

  The fact that he was again leaving the closet door open while he pried off his boots on the bootjack and methodically undressed seemed significant somehow, though he might as well have been standing in the next county.

  He’d gone from putting her on the spot with that kiss last night to abruptly walking away, undressing with the door open as if it was normal for there to be no closed doors between them. And yet he’d locked away any bit of feeling between them and made it seem as if the kiss had never happened.

  Gabe peeled his shirt off and tossed it into the bin set apart for laundry, then started on his belt buckle. Lainey’s gaze shifted away and she walked quietly toward the hall door.

  By the time she got to the den, poured a cup of coffee and chose a place to sit on the leather sofa, she began to think about things from Gabe’s perspective.

  Perhaps he’d taken seriously her remark about waiting for genuine feeling between them, and was now determined to do nothing to push her into a show of affection. It made Lainey feel tender toward him to think that. The fact that he’d kept a respectful physical distance from her seemed to confirm her conclusion.

  Gabe didn’t have to verbally navigate boardroom politics and offices full of people who chatted through the day or wrote and read memos or shuffled papers or communicated via computer screens. It wasn’t that Gabe couldn’t verbally navigate boardrooms or offices, because a large portion of his success had come from doing just that. It was just more natural for him to work with laconic men of action like himself and animals that didn’t speak. He’d long ago learned to watch for signs and signals to make his determinations and come to sound decisions.

  Actions speak truer.

  Lainey strongly doubted he’d continue in a marriage or have children with a woman who wasn’t as honorable as he was. So of course everything she said would be weighed against her actions.

  Even she knew it was possible for an apology to be nothing more than an insincere token of politeness, self-serving rather than heartfelt or worse, a selfish manipulation. The proof of a fully sincere apology depended on the later actions of the person who’d made the apology. Did their behavior change? Did they demonstrate by their behavior a determination never to give the offense again?

  Lainey sipped her coffee and let her gaze scan the room, shifting from one small sculpture or artifact to another on the many shelves in the bookcases around her as she mulled it over. She was so absorbed by her thoughts that she didn’t hear Gabe’s bootsteps in the hall. When he stepped into the room, she glanced toward the open door.

  The instant her gaze made contact with the waiting look in Gabe’s, she realized his dark gaze must have fixed on her the moment she was in sight. Something flickered in his eyes before his gaze shifted and he crossed the room to his desk.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GABE was dressed in a white shirt and jeans, but different boots than he’d worn outside today. The white shirt set off his tan and gave his dark eyes a soft brightness that drew her to watch them.

  Lainey sensed the faint tension about him. Not anger. Maybe energy, but certainly in keeping with his natural intensity. Lainey felt her body begin to react to whatever it was she sensed in him and felt a tingle of feminine excitement.

  His dark gaze came up from scanning some papers on the top of the desk to meet hers. “Do you want to have a look at an overview of Talbot’s records?”

 
Lainey eased forward on the sofa. “Sure. Would you like coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  She reached to pour his cup and refill hers from the insulated carafe on the coffee table. Assuming the overview would be on the computer, she was about to stand when Gabe noticed.

  “It’s a printout, so stay where you are.” Gabe picked up a set of pages and came around the desk to the sofa. He sat down beside her and took the cup she offered as he passed her the printed sheets.

  Lainey paused to have another sip of coffee before she set her cup down to ease back on the sofa. Because the sofa was leather and Gabe outweighed her, she slid closer to him than she’d meant to, so her hip and thigh settled lightly against his. Her impulse was to move away, but she was wary of offending him. Lainey stayed where she was and casually leaned back as she would have if she’d not ended up so close to him. She couldn’t help it that her arm wedged against his.

  The furnace-like heat of Gabe’s big body radiated along her side from shoulder to thigh, causing the listings and figures she slowly paged through to read like gibberish. She felt the subtle tension in Gabe seep into her.

  Mental pictures of the various ploys her adolescent dates had used to engineer accidental touches—that were anything but accidental—played through her mind. Though she hadn’t done it on purpose, maybe Gabe would accept it as some signal of interest, if he interpreted it that way.

  If he still wanted this marriage they’d have to do something to close the distance between them soon. If he’d already changed his mind about staying married to her, she needed to know before they slept together another night. Nervousness almost made her chicken out before she could think of a way to open the subject.