Keeping his grip on the shovel, he backed out of the stall and looked down the length of the stable. His mother stood in the doorway, backlit by the sunlight, and dammit if it didn’t hurt just to look at her.
Lilly Carrington always had been and always would be a beautiful woman. Her shoulder-length blond hair was perfectly styled to curl around a heart-shaped face barely touched by age. Only a few wrinkles surrounded her green eyes, and she was still as slender and graceful now as she’d been when his rawhide-tough father had fallen head over heels for her.
“I told Summer I didn’t want you here.”
She faced his resentment head-on, and her slender shoulders straightened beneath the cream-colored silk suit she wore. Silk in a freakin’ stable. Was it any wonder his parents’ marriage hadn’t lasted? They were from two different worlds as different as...silk and rawhide. As night and day. As he and Theresa...
“It wasn’t Summer. A young lady named Theresa called and convinced me to come.”
Betrayal sliced through his gut only to be instantly cauterized by a white-hot rage. He would have expected his sister to go behind his back, but not Theresa. Not after everything he’d told her, after everything he’d shared with her about his father’s stroke and what had been the worst time in his life. He swore beneath his breath. “She had no right to do that.”
“She knew you’d be angry.”
“Angry’s not the half of it.” He stalked past her as he stormed outside, but his mother followed after him, moving faster over the uneven ground in heels than he would have thought possible.
“She knew there was a chance you’d never forgive her.”
She was right, dammit! He threw the shovel against the side of the stable and ripped off his gloves. And that she’d gone ahead and done it anyway—
“She took a huge risk inviting me here. Don’t you think you owe it to her to at least hear what I have to say?”
“I don’t owe her a damn thing.” He turned the water spigot at the side of the stables on full blast and aimed the hose at the shovel. The powerful spray shot water and dirt and manure in all directions. “I’ve lived my life making sure I don’t owe anyone. Making sure I don’t end up under anyone’s thumb ever again.”
Keeping a safe distance, his mother spoke over the high-pitched sound of water pounding against the thin metal. “If you’re talking about the life insurance—”
“The life insurance, Dad’s care, the way you use George’s money to control people. All of it.”
“I never tried to control you.”
Jarrett snorted at the flat-out lie. She wanted to talk? Fine, might as well get it over with. Anything to get her back on a plane and back in Atlanta. Hell, maybe he’d luck out and she’d take Summer with her.
Shutting off the water, he dropped the hose and turned to face her. “Never, huh? What about after Dad’s stroke? Why do you think I quit the rodeo? Why do you think I moved to Atlanta when you know how much I hated it there?”
“I thought... You wanted to be with your father.”
“Yeah, I did. And I would have done it anyway, but under my terms, not because you threatened me.”
He had to give her credit. Holding her head high, she looked him in the eye and quietly asked, “When did I ever threaten you, Jarrett? When did I ever ask one thing of you?” Realization dawned in her expression as she came to her own conclusion. “George,” she whispered as she closed her eyes for a moment.
“Did you really think I would have gone to work for him if I’d had any other choice?”
“I had hoped...”
“Hoped that we’d be one big, happy family.” Sarcasm filled his words, and he suffered a pinch of guilt when his mother flinched. Because somehow, even after everything, that really had been her hope. He knew it just as he’d known it during those court-mandated visits. But he hadn’t wanted to be a part of some Brady Bunch blended family. He’d wanted his own family—the way it had been when it was just the three of them—back.
His voice was flat when he added, “George made it clear that unless I moved back and took a job at the stables, he wouldn’t pay for Dad’s care.”
“I swear to you, Jarrett, I didn’t know. And I know you think he did this as some way to punish you, but it was only because he knew how much I missed you—”
“Don’t. After everything—just don’t.”
She looked stricken by his abrupt words. “I wish you would have told me back then.”
“Why? What difference would it have made?”
“You have to know I wouldn’t have held you to that bargain. I wouldn’t have forced you to stay.”
Right. As if she hadn’t forced him to stay every summer growing up. Jarrett shook his head. “George made it all too clear. His money, his rules.”
“Only it wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what?”
“It wasn’t George’s money, Jarrett. It was mine. I’m the one who paid for your father’s care, and I would have continued to do so even if you’d never stepped foot in Georgia again. I know you think I married George for his money, but that’s not true. I didn’t need his money. I had money of my own from my side of the family.”
“Since when?” he scoffed. “I remember growing up, we didn’t have money. Before the divorce, I remember you and Dad fighting about it all the time.”
“I’m sorry you heard those fights, but you misunderstood them. Your father always refused to touch any of my money. Even when it meant we had to struggle so hard. Even when it meant constantly moving from town to town for him to find work.”
His father had always been so proud. Jarrett wasn’t surprised to hear he wouldn’t accept what he would have seen as a handout from Lilly’s family. “Did you really think he would take money from you?”
“To save our marriage? To keep our family together? Yes, I had hoped he would. It wasn’t that I expected us to live this lavish lifestyle, son. But a home of our own? A chance to put down roots and make a life for ourselves rather than all the constant moving from ranch to ranch? That’s all I wanted.” She spread out her hands as if to encompass the ranch, the home he had built, as part of the life she’d once dreamed of having. “I was in my early twenties with a young son and no support around me. I spent so many of those years feeling lonely and afraid. I needed your father, but he was gone for days and weeks at a time and when he did come home, he was exhausted from working himself half to death. All I could think was that it didn’t have to be so hard. After a while, I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“And so you left us.”
“I left your father, Jarrett. I took you with me.”
“Yeah,” he snorted. “Until being a single mother got to be too hard, and you sent me back.”
“You’re right. It was too hard. It was too hard for me to see you so sad. You cried yourself to sleep every night! I knew how much you loved Ray and how much you would miss him, but I thought in time you’d get used to Atlanta and that visiting him would be enough. But the phone calls and visits only made it so much worse. You were miserable, and you hated living in the city. And when you started running away, I was just so afraid...”
“I was, what, seven? Eight? Every kid talks about running away when they’re little.”
“Not every kid makes it as far as the train station! You were ready to buy a ticket to Colorado because that’s where Ray had mentioned he was living.” Her shoulders slumped as she confessed, “That was the last straw. The point where I knew I couldn’t win. It didn’t matter what the courts may have said, I’d already lost you. You belonged with your father, and so I let you go.
“I don’t expect you to believe this, but it broke my heart, Jarrett. I loved you so much and giving you up was the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret it, but I did it be
cause I thought it was best for you. I wanted you to be happy, and I knew you’d never be happy, truly happy, if you stayed.”
Her gaze pleaded with him as she added, “But I never stopped loving you...just like I never stopped loving your father.”
“You felt sorry for him and guilty for leaving. If that’s what you want to call love—”
“I loved him,” Lilly repeated. “And as horrible as his stroke was, it gave me a chance to do what I never could during our marriage. I finally had the chance to spend time with him and take care of him. Ray was always so strong, so independent, always keeping his emotions so tightly wrapped up inside, that he never truly let me get close. Not in the way I needed him to.”
“I don’t believe you.” He couldn’t believe her. Couldn’t believe he’d been so wrong...
His mother sighed. “Well, at least believe this—the life insurance policy was never a ploy to control you. The money is yours to use with no strings attached. Don’t be so foolish as to risk your life rather than accept it.”
“I swore to myself after Dad’s stroke that I would never take the easy way out again.”
“And you are so like your father, Jarrett. Just as strong and just as stubborn. Don’t you see for a man like you, accepting someone’s help isn’t the easy way? It’s the hardest thing you could possibly do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jarrett shouldn’t have been surprised Theresa tracked him down at a remote corner of his property later that afternoon. But as he looked up at the sound of hoofbeats, his heart nearly slammed to a stop when he saw her on Silver. They’d gone riding together several times since that first day, but they’d either doubled up on Champ or he’d saddled Duke and Molly for the two of them.
His muscles tightened, ready for action, as if he’d be able to catch her if she fell when she was still a dozen yards away. Even so, he couldn’t help noticing she looked good in the saddle. She’d regained her confidence, and it showed in her ease of controlling the mare, in her grace, in her breathtaking beauty...
“What the hell are you thinking?” he demanded, grabbing for the reins the moment she pulled the horse to a stop beside him.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
He reached for her jeans-clad hips the moment she would have tried dismounting on her own. Her breasts brushed against his chest as he lowered her to the ground, and he gritted his teeth against the impossible longing. He held her for a moment longer than necessary, his body refusing to obey his brain as muscle memory took over. How many times had he reached for her during the past two weeks? In bed and out? He didn’t want to let her go. Not now, not ever.
He dropped his arms and forced himself to step back quickly before he could think of the pain to come. Ripping off the bandage and leaving tattered pieces of his heart behind. “You could have driven.”
“I wanted to ride.”
“Silver?”
She tossed her dark ponytail back over one shoulder. “Why not? You said yourself she’s ready for adoption.”
“Yes! By an experienced horsewoman!”
Her eyebrows rose in challenge, and he gave up the argument. Silver was ready, but so, too, was Theresa. It was time for them both to move on.
He turned back to the final section of decrepit fencing he had yet to dismantle. He could have spent the time working on one of the cabins, but he was not in the right state of mind to build something. Tearing stuff down with his bare hands? Yeah, that better suited his mood.
He had half a dozen boards in the back of the truck already, and he tossed another piece into the bed, where it landed with a satisfying thud. Two more boards followed, and Theresa had yet to say a word. He made a show of focusing on the job at hand, wrenching the sagging crossbeams from the rotting posts. The wood gave way from rusty metal with a nails-against-chalkboard screech. Despite the mild temperature, sweat stung his eyes, but he didn’t stop to wipe it away.
The heat from the sun was nothing compared to the magnifying-glass intensity of Theresa’s gaze, and finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He threw the crowbar into the back of the truck with a loud clatter and stripped off his gloves. “You want to talk? Talk. You can start by telling me what the hell you thought you were doing by inviting my mother to come here.”
“I thought you needed to hear her side of the story.”
Ever since talking to his mother, images from the past had played through his mind like a movie he’d seen a dozen times, only now, he was wearing the 3-D glasses he’d never had before. Subtle nuances he’d missed stood out, sharp and clear and cutting.
His excitement as a little boy for his dad coming home...because Ray had been gone for weeks at a time.
The awesome forts he’d made out of cardboard boxes...after they’d moved again and again and again.
A childhood filled with freedom for him...and a marriage filled with loneliness for his mother.
And now, everything he had, everything he’d spent the past two years building in his father’s name—the ranch, the rescue, his chance for a life after the rodeo—he owed to his mother. The solid future he’d built for himself suddenly seemed as shaky as the rotting fence, ready to collapse with one good shove.
He felt hollowed out inside, empty and...scared. Just as he had as a little kid when his mother took him away from his father, from the ranch and the horses and the land that he’d already loved.
He hated the raw vulnerability as the pride he’d taken in all he’d accomplished was stripped away, leaving him naked, bleeding and exposed... With Theresa there to witness the humiliation.
“You shouldn’t have asked her to come here. You had no right—”
“Right?” She interrupted, her blue eyes flashing, her ponytail trembling with the emotion surging through her. “I think I have every right to do whatever it takes to keep you from getting yourself killed!”
“You don’t know—”
“And neither do you! You said yourself one throw from a bull could be all that it takes, and yet you’re willing to take that chance? Why? Why is it so hard for you to see that your mother loves you?”
Jarrett flinched as her words reached out and slapped at him. Lilly had told him accepting help was that hardest thing for him to do, but she was wrong. Accepting love was. Accepting it, believing it, counting on it only to find one day that it was gone.
Theresa stepped closer, her anger softening around the edges, but her body still strung tight from holding back the tide of emotion. And he knew what she was going to say. Saw it written in the gorgeous sapphire of her eyes.
“I love you, Jarrett. I want to stay here. I want to be with you, but not if you go back to bull riding. Not if you’re willing to risk your life rather than—rather than risking your heart.” The tears welling in her eyes reached the breaking point, spilling over her lashes and down her cheeks. “All you have to do is ask me to stay.”
Don’t go. Stay.
As the words repeated through his head, Jarrett realized why they sounded so heartbreakingly familiar. He’d heard them before—the last words his father spoke to his mother before she left him.
Don’t go. Stay.
He’d only been seven at the time, but even at that young age, he’d heard the sheer desperation, the utter hopelessness behind them. He’d known then, just as he knew now, that they wouldn’t be enough.
So he did what his father hadn’t been able to and remained silent as the woman he loved left him behind.
* * *
Tears blinded Theresa on the ride back to the stables, turning the rolling hills and green meadows into a shimmering watercolor painting. She was lucky Silver was so well trained that the mare knew her way home. But when she thought of Jarrett giving the horse up, sending her away from the only home she’d likely known, the tears only fell faster. Ragged sobs buil
t in her chest, but she held them back until she reached the corral. Sliding from the saddle, she buried her face against the satiny warmth of Silver’s neck.
She loved him so much, and for a split second, she’d fooled herself into thinking he might feel the same. She’d known inviting his mother to the ranch was a risk, and she’d expected his anger. What she saw, though, as he’d first caught sight of her astride Silver was a concern that overwhelmed everything else. His hazel eyes had widened, and when he pulled her into his arms, she’d felt the shaky breath he took, the longing that reached inside her, caught hold of her heart and sparked a rhythm loud enough that he surely must have been able to hear it. Don’t let go. Don’t let go.
But he’d done more than let her go. He’d pushed her away. She’d poured out her heart and soul, and he’d left them bleeding on the ground. And as hurt as she was, as angry as she was, she was more terrified than anything. If Jarrett went back to bull riding, all it would take was one wrong move. One bad fall...
Theresa didn’t know how long she stood there, taking what comfort she could from the patient mare’s solid presence, before old habits kicked in. She took her time unsaddling the horse, brushing her down and seeing that she had fresh water and a few extra pieces of carrot before stabling her.
“I guess I don’t need to ask how things went.”
Summer’s soft voice reached Theresa as she gave Silver a final pat. I’m going to miss you, girl.
Taking a deep breath, she faced Jarrett’s sister. “I knew the chance I was taking.”
Summer’s eyes—so similar to Jarrett’s—filled with tears. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t come here, none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Summer. You were trying to reunite your family and only had Jarrett’s best interests at heart. I know that, and I—I can only hope he’ll get that through his thick skull and figure it out for himself.”
Romancing the Rancher Page 18
