The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6)

by Joan Johnston

  In that precious predawn moment, she’d been very aware that she loved Clay Blackthorne. And that she’d lied to him.

  Libby was terrified of what Clay would do when he found out the truth. That she was only sixteen, not twenty-one, as she’d told him. That she was the daughter of his father’s mortal enemy, King Grayhawk. And that she was pregnant.

  She’d known she owed him an explanation. But after the exquisite night of lovemaking just past—which might very well be their last, considering what she was about to tell him—it was hard to confess what she’d done.

  “Clay…” She heard a gurgle as she swallowed over the painful lump in her throat.

  His forefinger smoothed the furrow between her eyes. He smiled at her as he said in a gruff, early-morning voice, “What’s this frown all about?”

  “I have something I need to tell you.”

  He grinned and said, “That sounds serious.”

  “It is.”

  He sobered, leaned forward and kissed her lips gently, and said, “What can I do to help, sweetheart?”

  Her throat ached from the deceit she’d practiced on the man she loved. Her heart was pounding with fear of what Clay would do when he knew the truth.

  “I’m pregnant,” she blurted.

  She saw surprise flare in his eyes, before they narrowed. He sat up and pulled her up with him. She grabbed at the wool blanket to cover her nakedness, suddenly ashamed, like Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  “You said you were on the pill.”

  She glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes, needing to hide her guilt, and said, “I’m not.”

  He grabbed her arms and said, “Look at me, Libby.”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze and saw the sudden wariness in his eyes.

  “What’s going on?” he asked between tight jaws.

  “I thought you’d be able to tell,” she said quietly.

  “Tell what?” he said irritably. When she didn’t answer, he shook her and said, “Talk to me!”

  “That I was a virgin when you and I—”

  “Are you telling me—” He let her go abruptly. “That’s not possible. There was no barrier to—”

  “There was!” She’d felt something the first time he’d broached her, but whatever barrier had been there had apparently been broken without Clay being aware of it.

  His hands fisted on his thighs as he stared suspiciously into her eyes. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  How could she explain that she’d never intended to have sex with him? That she’d only planned to tease him and leave him high and dry? But that she’d loved what she felt when he touched her, adored his kisses even more, and she hadn’t wanted him to stop.

  It had just…happened.

  She hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth about herself, because she hadn’t wanted this amazing interlude to end. As she’d known it would, as soon as he found out who she really was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a low, trembling voice, focusing her gaze on her knees.

  “Sorry isn’t going to cut it!” he shot back. “What are you going to do?”

  She stared up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “About the baby.”

  She continued to stare.

  “Are you keeping it?” he snapped.

  “Of course I’m keeping it!” she retorted, appalled that he could think anything else.

  He let out a breath and said in a voice so low she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, “Thank God.”

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said miserably. For any of it to happen.

  He reached out and twined his hand with hers and looked into her eyes and said, “I would rather have waited for kids, but I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “You’re not?”

  He grinned and said, “I didn’t plan to fall in love with you. But I have. A politician needs a wife. I suppose we’ll just have to marry a little sooner than I’d planned and with a little less pomp and circumstance.”

  “You want to marry me?” she said, her jaw gaping.

  In the moment he opened his mouth to speak, they heard hoofbeats.

  Libby leapt to her feet at the sight of the four riders loping in their direction and dropped the blanket to scramble into her clothes. Clay was laughing at her, telling her not to worry, that he’d make sure that whoever it was didn’t bother them. He dragged on his briefs and jeans and stepped out bare-chested from beneath the willow that had protected them.

  And found himself confronting King Grayhawk, backed up by three of his cowhands.

  “You’re trespassing on my land,” Clay said. “You can turn your horses around and—”

  “Where’s my daughter?” King demanded.

  “How the hell should I know where your daughter is?” Clay retorted.

  “I’m here, Daddy,” Libby said, stepping from beneath the concealing branches of the tree.

  If she lived to be ninety-nine, Libby would never forget the look of utter horror on Clay’s face as he turned to face her. “You said your name was Henderson.”

  She shook her head.

  “King Grayhawk is your father?”

  Libby flushed with shame and once again lowered her gaze, unable to endure the shock and confusion in Clay’s eyes. “Yes,” she whispered past her constricted throat.

  “My sixteen-year-old daughter,” King said.

  She heard Clay suck in a breath of air and waited for him to release it. She reached out to him, wanting to explain, but he jerked away as though she were something unclean and expelled his breath in a rush. When she reached out her hands to him in supplication, he shook his head, his gray eyes remote, as though a wall had gone up to keep her from seeing inside.

  “Saddle my daughter’s horse,” King ordered one of his cowhands.

  “I can do it, Daddy,” Libby said.

  “Get your clothes on,” he said curtly.

  Libby realized she was still barefoot, and that her blouse wasn’t tucked into her jeans and her belt was still unbuckled. She shoved her long blond hair behind her ear and felt a piece of grass, which she quickly plucked out and threw away. She turned her back on her father and his men and tucked in her blouse and rezipped her jeans and buckled her belt, then stood one-legged while she pulled on her socks and boots.

  “Let’s go,” King ordered.

  She didn’t look at Clay. She didn’t speak to him. But before she’d taken two steps toward her horse he snagged her arm and said, “Wait.”

  “Let go of my daughter,” King ordered.

  Clay looked up at him and said through tight jaws, “She and I have things we need to discuss.”

  “No, you don’t,” King said implacably.

  Clay turned to her and said, “I’ll come see you at your father’s house, and we’ll talk.”

  She glanced up at him long enough to see the warmth was gone from his eyes, then hurried to mount her horse.

  Behind her she heard her father say, “Don’t bother coming to Kingdom Come. You won’t be welcome.”

  “I’m coming. Do what you have to do,” Clay said.

  “You set one foot on my property, and I’ll shoot you for the lowdown coyote you are!” her father said.

  “Send your men away,” Clay said eyeing the three cowboys. “So we can talk.”

  Libby was mounted by then and rode toward her father, stopping at Clay’s side. “I’ll talk to him, Clay. I’ll tell him…everything.”

  “I’ll come tonight,” Clay said. But he didn’t touch her.

  Libby felt tears sting her eyes and nose.

  “Get home, girl,” her father said.

  Libby had kicked her mount into a lope. She hadn’t despaired, because she thought perhaps Clay was the one man who could talk her father around. Clay loved her.

  Or had before he found out the truth.

  She was carrying his child. A child he’d wanted.

  Or had before he found out t
he truth.

  All would be well, she thought. She would explain everything and he would forgive her and they would be together forever.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Libby glanced sideways to the man sitting next to her twenty years later, moving the swing with his booted foot, wondering if Clay ever thought about that long-ago dawn. And the darkness that had followed it.

  “I’m worried about Kate,” he said.

  Libby felt a stab of hopelessness that his first words were not about the two of them, but about their daughter. It was a blessing that he cared so much about Kate, under the circumstances. But she wanted…the impossible.

  Clay Blackthorne was his mother’s son, all right. Eve Blackthorne had never forgiven Clay’s father for loving another woman. And Clay was never going to forgive her for deceiving him. She was tired of longing for a doomed love. Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe, ha! It was long past time to give up.

  But they had a daughter together. And she was in trouble. Her own concerns would have to wait.

  “I’m worried about Kate, too,” Libby said. “Jack’s a great deal older than her. And his reputation is…not the best.”

  “I wish there were some way to convince her what a big mistake she’s making,” Clay said.

  “How do you know it is a mistake?” Libby asked. “She seems very much in love with him.”

  “He doesn’t seem equally smitten.”

  “That would be a problem if it were ture,” Libby said. She looked at Clay and asked, “What makes you think Jack doesn’t love Kate?”

  Clay’s brow furrowed. “I can’t put my finger on anything specific.”

  “The physical attraction is certainly evident,” Libby said.

  Clay smiled ruefully. “It’s hard to tell her not to have sex before marriage when it’s so obvious her parents did it.”

  “And did it well.” Libby bit her lip. She had to forget dreams of what might have been. Or wishes for what might be. She had to stay focused on Kate.

  She shivered as a tendril of morning mist settled onto her bare shoulder, where the quilt had fallen away.

  “You’re cold.” Clay pulled the quilt higher on her shoulder and settled his arm around her, drawing her close.

  It would have been awkward to try to hold her head upright, so Libby gave in to the urge to lean against Clay’s shoulder, to pretend that they were the happily married parents of an exuberant, willful child—who might be headed for heartbreak.

  She listened to the steady thump of Clay’s heart for a moment before she asked, “How are we going to convince Kate to slow down?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. His other arm joined the one that was on her shoulder, so she was being held in his embrace. They sat silently for a long while, as the sun moved higher in the sky. Libby would have given a great deal to know what was going on in Clay’s head, but she didn’t want to interrupt this moment of truce and solace.

  “If North wasn’t busy stealing Bitter Creek from you, we could ask him,” Libby said. “Kate always listens to him.”

  She felt Clay’s body tense beneath her cheek before he said, “I don’t think North is going to be much help with Kate. He’s got someone much more interesting to keep him busy. My fiancée. Or should I say former fiancée.”

  Libby leaned back abruptly, pulling out of Clay’s embrace. “The choice was Jocelyn’s, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it? Don’t tell me you don’t know what your big brother’s been up to,” Clay said.

  “I don’t!” Libby protested.

  “The same day my family had its powwow and discovered that North was the corporate raider who’d bought up all our stock, Jocelyn decided to move in with your brother.”

  Libby frowned. “And you think the timing of their liaison isn’t coincidental.”

  “I think it’s entirely intentional. I think Jocelyn went to North’s ranch to talk him out of taking Bitter Creek away from us.”

  “Why would he listen to her?”

  Clay’s eyes narrowed and his lips flattened before he said, “I think she sold herself to him—in exchange for holding off on doing anything with Bitter Creek.”

  Libby stared at Clay, wondering how he’d made such a leap in logic. “What makes you think she’d do something like that? Or that North would accept such an offer?”

  “Why else would she call off the wedding so suddenly?” Clay said. “And jump into bed with a man she hardly knows?”

  “Maybe Jocelyn wasn’t sure she loved you and—”

  “She loves me,” Clay said certainly. “Giselle told me so.”

  “Your late wife told you her sister loves you?” Libby said in disbelief.

  Clay rubbed a self-conscious hand across his nape. “Giselle and I talked a lot before she died. She wanted to make sure I’d be happy when she was gone. She knew Jocelyn loved me and wanted to make sure I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of a relationship just because Jocelyn was her sister.”

  “And you fell in love with Jocelyn,” Libby said flatly. “Right on cue.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Clay said.

  “What was it like?” Libby said, feeling her face flush at the realization that she’d never had a chance with Clay, that his future wife had been selected even before Giselle had died.

  “Jocelyn is a wonderful political hostess. She—”

  “A role I never would have filled comfortably,” Libby said caustically.

  “She’s easy to get along with.”

  “And I’m not?” Libby flared.

  “She’s beautiful and—”

  “Good in bed?” Libby snarled.

  “That’s enough,” Clay said quietly.

  It infuriated Libby when Clay got calmer as she got angrier. She supposed it was something he’d learned as a politician, but it never failed to make her lose her temper. “I want to hear more about how your precious Jocelyn sold herself into sexual slavery to my brother to save your precious Bitter Creek,” she flared.

  “I don’t know that for certain. It’s just something I suspect,” Clay said.

  “And you forgive her, I suppose, for betraying you, because her motives are so self-sacrificing and noble?”

  “Yes, I do. If she’d have me, I’d take her back in a heartbeat.”

  Libby leapt to her feet, dumping the quilt on the porch, her body flooded with heat, despite the fact she was practically naked. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You can forgive her for leaving you for another man, for lying to you, and ‘understand’ she never meant to hurt you. Yet you’ve never forgiven me for the lies I told. I’m a fallen woman who can never be raised up. I’m a hated Grayhawk who got the better of a Blackthorne, and you’re going to make me pay for it the rest of my life! Is that it?”

  Clay was also on his feet, his gray eyes stormy, his hands fisted, his legs spread wide. “There’s a big goddamn difference in the two situations,” he said. “I loved you! You tore out my soul, Libby. How am I supposed to forgive you for that?”

  Libby’s eyes were blurred with tears, and her throat so painfully swollen she could hardly speak. But speak she did. “You were supposed to forgive me because you loved me. You were supposed to realize that all those things I told you when you came to Kingdom Come were lies! That I only said I hated you because I didn’t want you to be hurt the way my father was threatening to hurt you.”

  “You father was powerless to hurt me!”

  “How was I supposed to know that? I was sixteen and pregnant—and you’d gotten me that way. My father said it was statutory rape, that you’d go to prison. And he was—is—such a powerful man that—”

  “My father was—is—just as powerful,” Clay retorted. “You should have had faith in me!”

  Libby moaned and covered her face. “Oh, God.” She forced herself to raise her eyes to Clay. “You should have had faith in me, Clay. That I loved you. That I wanted you. That I needed you. But you stalked away like a wounded buffalo—”<
br />
  “You told me to get out!” he shouted. “Of your house and your life!”

  “You should have known I didn’t mean it!”

  “How, Libby?” he said, furiously quiet again. “How was I supposed to know?”

  “Because,” she sobbed.

  “Because. Right. That’s a hell of a reason,” Clay said, shoving a hand through his hair.

  “How can you forgive Jocelyn and not me?” she said, her chest physically painful with the hurt she felt. “How can you believe her motives are virtuous and that mine weren’t?”

  His hands uncurled and lay limp at his sides. He shook his head. “Damn it, Libby. Why are you doing this? I thought this was all water under the bridge. Why does it matter—”

  “I loved you, too,” she interrupted. “So much that I haven’t been able to have a relationship with another man. I kept hoping that somehow, someday, you’d see the light.”

  He stared at her, stricken.

  She lifted beleaguered eyes to him, laughed softly, and said, “I’ve just realized that while you’ve always been the love of my life, it’s obvious I’ve never been the love of yours. I can’t believe I’ve been waiting around for you to wake up and realize that anytime these past twenty years, when we were both single, we could have had back what we lost because of a young girl’s foolishness and a young man’s pride.”

  Her lips curled in a sneer. “That ends now. Today. You had your chance, Clay. You had a hundred chances, but you blew them all. As of right now, I’m over you. The moment, the instant, our daughter is out of the mess she’s in, I never want to see you again!”

  At that moment, the screen door was shoved open and Kate stepped onto the porch. She was wearing a man’s terry cloth robe, and Jack was right behind her. “What’s wrong, Mom? Daddy? I heard shouting.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart,” Libby said with a wobbly smile, as she grabbed for the quilt and awkwardly settled it around her shoulders.

  “Then why are you crying?” Kate demanded.

  Libby swiped at her eyes with her wrists and said, “I was reminiscing with your father.” She forced her smile wider and said, “How about some breakfast? I need to get back to Austin.”