“Not really. Because you weren’t with me. Not really. You were going home to her.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Then why did you keep it a secret?”
“I don’t know. That was stupid. I just—I didn’t think you’d understand.” He paused. “Looks like I was right.”
She peeked again. His hair was disheveled, with a boyish cowlick sticking up in the back. It reminded her of the boy he’d been, and that made her turn toward him, just the slightest bit, and meet his eyes.
There was so much sorrow there, her insides softened and twisted. A shiver skittered up her spine, born of dread for the conversation to come and fear of her own weakness, but there was something else—something that warmed her soul. It felt a lot like love, but that couldn’t be.
How could you love a man who’d broken your heart?
She wished she really was a Victorian virgin. Then she wouldn’t know what it was like to lie in his arms. She wouldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her that way, up in the hayloft, where they’d reignited the love they’d shared almost all their lives. Love that had faded like a banked fire but never died.
Closing her eyes, she channeled the unconscious damsel again and prayed for oblivion.
Chapter 38
Cade couldn’t help smiling at Jess’s dramatic effort to convince him she was sleeping. She was draped over her mother’s fancy couch, limp as a silk scarf. The contrast between the stiff old furniture and graceful Jess, with her tumbling curls and rumpled blanket, made him love her all the more.
He’d never been much for talking, especially when it came to emotions, and he’d sworn he was done trying with Jess anyway. But the thought of losing her had woken something deep inside him—something that didn’t care about logic or common sense or what anybody thought. Something that simply loved Jess Bailey and always would.
Working with horses had taught him to take a chance and try when an unexpected opportunity arose. But what could he say?
He remembered something Heck had said years earlier.
A pony ride’s always the way to that little girl’s heart. A pony ride or a good horse story.
Setting his hat on the floor, he began. “Once the real estate agent turned up, I knew I’d lost you. And all I could think to do was work, get with the horses, so I’d feel better. So when I was done with those calves, I took that sorrel mare your dad bought into the round pen.”
Her lashes quivered, just the slightest bit, and he knew she was listening.
“She could tell I was upset,” he continued. “Skittered ’round the ring like a mosquito on a windowpane, trying to get away from me, and I don’t blame her.”
“Me neither,” Jess said. “I know just how she felt. Wondering how to get loose, wishing you’d just leave her alone.”
Ouch. That hurt, but at least it was a sign the old Jess was in there. It was a pretty good insult, after all.
“I finally calmed her down. Thought about leaving here myself, giving up, and that seemed to calm us both. But you know I’m not the type to give up.”
No response.
“Later on, I tried to do some chores,” he continued. “Simple stuff you wouldn’t think I could screw up, but I kept dropping things, breaking things. Tripping over my own big feet.” He sighed. “I can block this out for a little while. Focus real hard on work. But it doesn’t last. I’m not going to be good for anything until I make things right between you and me, so here I am.”
Uncovering her eyes, she turned and faced him.
“Just stop, Cade. It’s done. I can’t forget what I saw.”
“So you’re not interested in why Amber Lynn was there or what I have to say about it.” He struggled to swallow a bolt of anger that had snuck up and surprised him. He couldn’t be mad at Jess—could he?
He loved her. He wanted her back. But she wouldn’t let him explain, and it was making him crazy. She knew what kind of person he was. He’d been true to her all his life. Why couldn’t she trust him enough to at least listen?
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere,” he said when she didn’t answer. “Guess I’ll just keep talking to the walls, telling them what I have to say. You can listen or not. But if you won’t even listen, you’re not the person I thought you were.”
Her face flushed. “You’re not the person I thought you were, either. You had your ex-wife in your house, sleeping in your bed, while you were carrying on with me. What kind of person does that?”
“A stupid one.” He picked up his hat and spun it one way, then another, telling it everything without once looking at Jess. “Amber Lynn showed up the day you got home. I was surprised. She took darn near everything I had and went off with some other guy. I never expected to see her again, and that was fine with me. But I didn’t realize what the guy was like. He hit her, Jess.” He swallowed. The thought of a man hitting Amber Lynn—hitting any woman—made him feel sick. “Once she was sitting in my kitchen with a black eye that took up half her face, I couldn’t send her away.”
“A black eye? Really?” Jess raised a skeptical brow.
“Really.” He looked down at the hat again. “I told her to go to her dad, but she said the guy would find her there, so I let her stay. I didn’t want to. I told her to leave every goddamn day, but I had to go to work at the Vee Bar every morning, and when I’d get home, there she’d be, spouting some lame excuse for staying.”
Jess sighed deeply.
“I know,” he said. “I should have changed the locks. But I didn’t want to carry her out, and since she’d already been hit by a man—well, I didn’t want to damage her.”
Jess turned, her gaze hard. The hat stopped spinning, and he slapped it on his head.
“You know, Jess, I care about people.” He leaned in, resting his elbows on his thighs. “Am I supposed to stop when it comes to Amber Lynn? I mean, she’s just about my least favorite person in the world, but she was still a woman who’d been hurt and was in danger. So I let her stay, but I slept on the sofa. Never touched her.”
“Right. Sure.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I don’t. I saw you, Cade.” Her eyes filled with tears, and her face crumpled. “On the steps of Molly’s trailer. She was climbing you like a tree. Is that your little love nest?”
“Aw, geez.” Removing the hat, he ran a hand through his hair. “Molly rented Amber Lynn the trailer to get her the hell out of my place. She called and asked me to bring Amber Lynn’s suitcase over. You can ask her. I was just dropping it off, and Amber Lynn grabbed me.” He sighed. “I’ve never been inside that trailer, swear to God.”
Replacing the hat, he rose and paced the length of the room. “If you’d stopped, seen what was going on, you would have known that. But you took off, thinking the worst of me instead.” Reaching the far side of the room, he paced back. “Some guy hit her, Jess. What did you want me to do? And frankly, I didn’t treat her that great myself. I don’t love her. I don’t think I ever did, and that means I wronged her, in a way.” Returning to the chair, he slumped into it, letting the brim of his hat slant over his eyes. “I never should have married her. Should have gone to Denver instead and chased you down. Should have fought for you.”
Jess let out a faint little mew, like a cat trapped in a closet, then looked away as if she’d like to take it back.
But he’d heard her, and he knew now at least part of what was wrong. The problem went back further than he’d thought and had been festering all this time. He looked down at his hands a moment, gathering strength.
“Guess I should explain why I didn’t.” He gave her a wry smile. “Kind of smacks of self-pity, so I never talked about it.”
She blinked, and he caught a faint shift in her expression. Maybe she wanted to hear this. Hard as it was to say, it might be the missing piece that w
as keeping them from understanding each other. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he spoke to the window, wishing his words could float off and carry all his baggage to the mountains and beyond.
“You knew my dad, but you never saw the worst of him. The beatings? Those I could take. Bruises fade. But he was a mean drunk, and it was his goal in life to convince me I was useless and stupid and should never have been born.” Removing the hat, he sat down and spoke into the crown. “He drilled it into me, day after day, night after night, so I could never believe I was worth a damn thing. I always thought I was just damn lucky you thought so much of me, so when you left—well, I thought you’d figured it out, that’s all. So I did you a favor and let you go on to better things.”
Jess looked puzzled. “But he was gone by then.”
Cade looked up, meeting her eyes. “I still hear his voice now, Jess. It’s in my head every day. I don’t listen, for the most part, but he’s still there, in every board and shingle of that house.”
She sat up, facing him, her knees touching his. “I thought you didn’t care when I left. You never tried to change my mind, and you moved on to her so fast…”
“It wasn’t Amber Lynn I moved on to. It was whiskey. She was just a by-product, which wasn’t exactly fair to her.” He sighed. “Everything my dad told me came true, so I figured I might as well follow in his footsteps and be a drunk. It’s nothing I’m proud of, believe me.”
He ran a hand down his face, wishing he could just erase himself. There were too many memories, and there was too much at stake. It was exhausting. He stood and stretched.
“I need to go home. I don’t need you feeling sorry for me, okay? I just thought you deserved to know why I gave up so fast.”
She stood, staggering a little, and paled. Clutching his arm, she let him ease her back onto the couch. A faint flutter of hope made him sit beside her.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. Occasionally, her eyes would scan his, as if she was reading his thoughts.
What she ought to be reading is my heart. Because her name’s branded on it so big, there’s no room for anybody else.
He stilled his emotions just as he had for Redline and a hundred other horses, and like the horses, she finally gave in. He felt the air around them calm, the tension dissipating.
So now what? Should he touch her? Kiss her? She seemed uneasy for some reason.
She cleared her throat.
Oh boy, here it comes.
“Um, there’s just one problem with all that. You said Amber Lynn had a black eye?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Guess I should’ve taken a picture.”
“No, I believe you, and I know you couldn’t turn her away when she’d been hurt.” Jess looked away. “She knew that, too.”
He nodded. “She knows me pretty well.”
“But when she came to the window—Cade, she was fine. There was no black eye. She was pretty as ever.”
He stilled, but his mind was churning, churning, working at his memories, untangling the truth from the mess Amber Lynn had created. He remembered her clad in her sheer nightie, pointing to the window and screaming. How had her face looked?
He wasn’t sure. His mind worked at the knot a little more, and he remembered telling her to go. He’d been firm, almost cruel, and she’d looked at him with wide, hurt eyes…
Wide, hurt, and perfectly normal. No bruising, no cuts.
“Holy smokes.” He felt like he’d been punched in the chest. “There was no black eye.”
“That Amber Lynn always was a whiz with makeup.”
Cade stood and paced the length of the room. He felt a fool, but he also felt free, liberated from the stone that had been weighing him down ever since he’d seen Amber Lynn at his kitchen table.
“I’m an idiot, Jess.” He joined her on the couch. “But I don’t lie, and I don’t cheat. Never have, never will.”
She nodded, but after all they’d just shared, he’d hoped to see trust in her eyes. Instead, he saw fear.
It didn’t surprise him. Jess wasn’t scared of much, but she was scared of love. The way her mom left had broken her heart, and she’d carried that pain like a shield all her life. Behind it, she was wary and liable to bolt, like an animal that had lost a limb in a trap.
She looked down at their joined hands, then up at him. The lines in her face, forged by worry, had smoothed out. But that fear—there was no getting past it.
He thought of Redline, standing at his shoulder, trusting him at last. That moment, that decision, was the end for a horse. They gave their whole hearts.
Women? They were a little more complicated.
Chapter 39
Jess wanted to be with Cade again, to live in the perfect circle that had held the two of them, bound by a lifetime of love. She longed to put this whole Amber Lynn mess behind them. But things weren’t quite that simple.
For one thing, seeing Amber Lynn at his window had reminded her of how wrong love could go and how much it could hurt. For another, she’d believed the worst of him way too easily. On top of all that, he’d believed the worst of her, too, and still did. He actually believed she’d put Hermy in the gazebo, unscrewed the swing to make it fall down, and flashed the Dude and Dudette with Hermy’s messy backside on purpose, all so she could have her way, like some spoiled princess. She’d told him over and over she hadn’t done any of those things, but he wouldn’t believe her. And then he had the nerve to be insulted that she thought he’d cheat with Amber Lynn. Why did trust only work in one direction?
His eyes were probing hers, trying to read her mind, but her thoughts were swirling and tangling like threads in the wind, unknowable even to her. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was crazy.
Maybe she was tired.
“I’m sorry. I need time to figure things out.” A tangled mass of curls flopped over her forehead and into her eyes. She swept it aside with one hand. “I’ve been wrong about everything, ever since I got home. You know, I even thought I could run the ranch by myself at one point.”
“You could.”
“Not without help. I was arrogant and stupid.”
He smiled. “I thought you were independent and brave.”
“Well, I thought Molly was a gold digger. And when I overheard her talking to the school principal on the phone, I thought she was cheating on my dad.”
He gave her a wide-eyed look of disbelief.
“I know.” She let her shoulders slump. “I think the worst of everyone, and I’m wrong every time. I was mad at Molly, at you, at life in general, but most of all, I’m mad at myself. I’m watching everything good in my life stream away behind me, like a long road in a rearview mirror, and I’ll never be able to go back.”
“You’re right,” he said. “We can’t go back. But we can move forward, and when we do, we’ll make everything better, I promise.”
She swiped at a renegade tear. “You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can,” he said. “I’ll make sure. I’ll make damn sure. And I’ll start with your porch.” Standing, he hiked up his belt, as if preparing for a job. “It’s too big a job for me, with work backed up and waiting, so I’ll call Riley.”
“Okay.” She thought a moment. “Cade, there’s one more thing we need to fix.”
He grinned. “Just one?”
She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “You know who really did all that stuff—the raccoon, the porch, that business with Hermy?”
“Yeah, I know.” He sat and took her hand, his eyes warm with understanding. “But why didn’t you just tell me? Don’t you feel better now?”
With a rush of anger, she realized he thought she was confessing.
“Geez, Cade, I told you, it wasn’t me. Think, okay? Who could it have been?”
He looked around the room, giving the deer head over the fireplace a suspicious squint
, as if it might be guilty, then locked eyes with her. That was his answer.
He still believed it was her.
“It was Amber Lynn,” she said. “It had to be.”
“Yeah, right.” He smiled, as if they were sharing a joke.
How could he not see it had to be his ex? The woman might as well have signed her name in red paint. After the fake shiner and all her obvious efforts to manipulate him, he still couldn’t see her guilt.
Didn’t that mean she still had a hold on him? He claimed he’d never loved his ex, yet he still believed the best of her—and the worst of Jess.
He’d explained why Amber Lynn had been in his bed. He’d explained the embrace at the trailer. But things still didn’t feel right. And while she believed his explanations, he wasn’t offering her the same level of trust.
And that wasn’t right.
* * *
Molly couldn’t help smiling. Judging from his enthusiastic off-key singing in the shower, Heck was excited about the trip they were taking. The Loose-Ends Gang had been invited to summer riding camp at Decker Ranch, so she and her husband were headed to one of the retirement communities she’d found.
Life was moving forward, change coming at them fast. The Rhinestone Cowboy had surprised them by making an offer on the ranch despite the epic porch disaster, and Val had recommended they accept it. Molly had seen Heck’s face pale at the thought, but he seemed happy enough now. He was concentrating on shaving when she stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his wide middle. He made a gasping noise, and she quickly glanced at him in the mirror. He thrust out his tongue and made a face.
“Don’t scare me like that.”
“You worry too much.” He patted her hands. “Maybe you’ll relax once we see what Old Fogey Bottoms has to offer.”
“I guess.” She sighed. “I’m not sure I want to leave this place, though. Especially not with those people taking over. I was sure we’d lost them when the porch fell down, and that was fine with me.”
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