“Yet you had no problem confiding in Kyle McCabe,” he retorted, incensed.
Adelaide threw up her hands and spun away. “He’s a cop. He’s able to keep his emotions out of it.”
Great. Another low blow. “Unlike me.”
Adelaide harrumphed, and pivoted back. “Where I’m concerned, yes!”
Suddenly so much made sense. “That was why McCabe kept stopping by to see you. Why you two chatted so intimately whenever you were together.”
Reluctant, she nodded.
Her betrayal stung. Unexpected jealousy roiled in his gut. “Is that where you disappeared yesterday during the festival? To see him?”
Adelaide shoved both hands wearily through her hair. “My father intercepted me when I went out to the parking lot to get the boxes of prizes. So yes, I had to talk to Kyle, let him know that I had ‘agreed’ to take the babies and run away with my dad. I thought my dad believed me. But I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. So I texted Kyle and asked him to meet me at the gas station.”
Kyle. Not me. “You could have been followed.”
She waved off his concern. “I had an excuse ready, if my dad had turned up there—that we needed to have my SUV ready as backup. And I did need to put gasoline in my vehicle.” She released a long, shuddering breath. “But as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary because my dad was already off changing his looks again, to a bespectacled, clean-cut, suit-and-tie executive.”
Her courage wowed him even as her recklessness made him furious. “You put yourself in danger!”
She disagreed. “My father never would have hurt me.”
“He already did.”
Adelaide scoffed. “I meant physically.”
The thought of something happening to her was enough to make him wild with grief. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” she countered just as stubbornly, marching forward, her fists balled at her sides, “I do.” Twin spots of color bloomed in her cheeks. “Dad had the chance just now to at least try something, but he didn’t. In fact, he wasn’t armed at all.”
Wyatt blinked. Who was she? “You’re defending him?”
“I’m saying my part in this is over and hopefully justice will finally be served and I don’t want to fight about it.” With an exhausted sigh, she sank in a chair.
Wyatt knelt in front of her, so she had no choice but to look at him. He took her cold, trembling hands in his.
She’d made a mistake. But he would forgive her. On one very important condition. “Promise me this will never happen again,” he pressed in a voice as low and urgent as his mood. “You’ll never cut me out of the loop.” He squeezed her hands. “Tell me that if you had to do it all over again, you would give me a heads-up.”
A myriad of emotions came and went in her eyes. Finally she sighed. “I can’t do that, because I wouldn’t, Wyatt. This was my family’s mess to clean up. Not yours. Your family was hurt enough already. No way was I going to let anything else happen. Not to any of you!”
“So you put yourself in harm’s way.”
“I did what I had to do. I protected your good name. I kept you and the twins and everyone else well away from whatever illegal shenanigans my father was embroiled in. So no one else would have to suffer at his hands. Not ever again.”
She was serious, even as she was courageous. Not sure whether he wanted to shake some sense into her or congraulate her, he blurted out, “Damn it, Adelaide...!”
“Damn it, Adelaide, what?” she retorted wearily.
Her stubborn insistence on handling everything by herself was unacceptable. “I can’t have you putting yourself and the twins in danger. For any reason!” he warned her quietly.
To his frustration, she stared at him for a long moment, then dug in all the harder. “I can’t have you doing that, either, but sometimes life requires us to do the things we do not want to do.”
Like stay married to him? he wondered. Even long enough to learn how to co-parent and consciously uncouple?
All he knew for certain was that the woman who had made love with him so tenderly, the wife who had finally started to open up her heart and soul to him, was nowhere to be found.
“You really will not admit you’re in the wrong here?” he said slowly. “For lying to me, and keeping me in the dark? For not giving me the chance to be the husband I should be, the husband that you have every right to want and need?”
Still holding his gaze, she disengaged their hands and shook her head. Letting him know in that one instant that she was always going to shut him out. And never more routinely than when it really counted.
He stood, aware he’d never felt more betrayed and more bitterly disillusioned in his life.
He couldn’t live like that.
Neither could she.
Their kids really couldn’t.
“Then the two of us having nothing else to say.”
Chapter 15
“Wyatt left you?” Chance asked later the same day, shooting her an incredulous look.
Adelaide nodded miserably. The news of her father’s arrest and the drama that had ensued preceding it had spread through the town like wildfire. By noon, it was on the news reports all over the state. Knowing it would be even more of a story if the press learned she and Wyatt had also split up over it, Adelaide was doing her best to keep the dissolution of their relationship within the Lockhart family.
Hence, she had asked Sage and Lucille to come out to Wind River to babysit the twins while she worked on finding them a place other than the ranch to live. Starting immediately.
“He got dressed and walked out midargument. I thought—hoped—he might simmer down and come back,” she admitted with a weary shake of her head. Say he was sorry. That he still wanted to be with me. “But instead, he texted me that I could stay at the ranch as long I wanted.” She drew in an unsteady breath, achingly aware just what an unacceptable idea that was, with her feeling the way she did about him.
She turned away from their sympathetic looks, swallowing hard. “Or until my place is finished. That we could alternate care of the twins with your family’s help.” Hot angry tears pricked her eyes. “I assume to prevent us from running into each other.”
Molly moved closer, aghast. “Was all this before or after he gave you your Valentine’s Day gift?”
“We never got around to that. I mean, he tried last night, when we got home from the festival, but I couldn’t let him do something sweet for me when I was about to betray him.”
Molly and Chance exchanged troubled looks.
“So you knew how he would likely take your secrecy?” Chance asked.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
Chance gave her a look that said of course she had. She could have trusted his brother to keep quiet and cooperate with law enforcement, too.
Except Wyatt would have wanted to defend her. Or go in her stead. And if her father had seen Wyatt, he would have been tipped off and bolted.
The situation would have been more complicated and precarious than ever.
Wearily, Adelaide turned her attention back to the partially framed construction of the addition to her house. “Anyway, the reason I called you both over here was to ask you if it would be possible to put an immediate hold on construction, so I could move back in with the twins.”
“Sure, we can put a halt to the project,” Chance said. “Happens all the time. But with the foundation poured, and some of the framing started, you may want to go a little while longer...at least get the shell up, roof on. Doors and windows on.”
It would certainly look a lot better. “How long will that take?” Adelaide asked.
Molly and Chance considered. “A few weeks, if we rush,” Molly said.
Only one problem. “The twins and I don’t have any place to stay.”
“There’s always the bunkhouse,” Chance
pointed out kindly. “You were going to stay there before...”
...everything blew up, Adelaide finished silently. Before Wyatt and I discovered we had twins, and I fell for him all over again.
“Lucille’s offered.” To Adelaide’s relief, her mother-in-law had been very kind about everything, in fact, when they’d spoken.
“But?” Chance prompted.
Guilt and misery roiled inside her. “I don’t want Wyatt not to be able to see his mom whenever he wants. If I’m at the Circle H, I would interfere with their ability to see each other unencumbered. Which would in turn interfere with their making up over the whole keeping his learning disabilities a secret from everyone quarrel.”
Molly squinted. “I have a feeling there’s something more...”
Adelaide sighed. “She also told me I’m making a huge mistake, allowing her son to walk out on me. And that I should use every tool at my disposal—including bunking with her—to bring him back home.” Especially since that proposed “arrangement” was what had brought them all together in the first place.
“Maybe Lucille is right,” Molly said gently. “It is a little early to be giving up on everything you and Wyatt shared the past few weeks.”
If only it were that easy, she thought in frustration. “He gave up on us first. Besides, what am I supposed to do? Beg him to stay? He’s clearly never forgiven me for changing my mind about eloping, or not telling him of my plans to have a family alone before we finally made love. In his mind, this is just one more thing he’ll never be able to forget.”
And she couldn’t bear failing. Not again. Not when there was even more at stake.
A commiserating silence fell.
Eventually, Chance asked, “Does this mean you’re going to consciously uncouple after all and go ahead with the divorce?”
Adelaide released a weary breath, aware she was just going to have to find a way to overcome a broken heart. Again. “It’s not as if we were ever really together.” They’d been playing house while they embarked on a wildly passionate and reckless love affair. “We were just doing what we thought needed to be done for the kids at the time.” The honeymoon atmosphere they had enjoyed had been because of their babies, their growing love for them.
Brows rose.
Adelaide went to her fridge and looked inside to see what was there.
Not much, unless one counted condiments.
Making a mental note that she was going to have to go grocery shopping before she picked up the twins, she swung back around. “The good news is Jenny and Jake are too young to realize what their dad and I could have had, if only we were compatible. Which we are definitely not.”
“Right now you’re not,” Chance agreed flatly.
As if it were all her fault!
Ignoring her mounting pain and indignation, Adelaide shrugged and looked her soon to be ex-in-laws in the eye. “Look, I wish Wyatt and I could have the kind of forever and ever relationship that the two of you have, but we don’t. The bottom line is my dad was right. Wyatt is always going to be ready to walk out the door at the first disappointment, and I can’t live with someone who is never going to be able to find it in his heart to forgive me for my past, present or future transgressions. So, it’s better for everyone we cut our losses and part now.”
Molly reached out and took Chance’s hand. The couple was the picture of loving solidarity.
“We would agree if we thought it was my brother’s forgiveness that you really wanted, Molly,” Chance said quietly.
Eyes solemn, Molly added, “But we don’t.”
* * *
Wyatt returned to his ranch house as soon as he got the text from his mother. “Adelaide left?”
Lucille pulled a small load of baby clothes out of the dryer and carried the basket to the sofa. “She had to go into town to give the sheriff’s department her statement. And she wanted to check on the possibility of halting construction and moving back into her home.”
Wyatt looked at the twins, who were sleeping in their Pack ’N Plays, and Sage, who was in his kitchen doing what she always did when under stress—baking.
He returned to his mother’s side.
He didn’t want to talk about any of this, but he knew his mother wasn’t going to let it go until they did. “So she told you?”
Lucille folded a blue onesie. “And of course I think it’s my fault.”
“What? Why?” Wyatt went to the fridge to get a bottle of water.
“The mistakes I made when you were growing up.”
Not the three Ds again. He uncapped the bottle. “Mom. It’s over.”
“I don’t think so.” Lucille watched him take a long thirsty drink. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t still be reliving it. Or worried Adelaide isn’t strong enough to stick with you through thick and thin.”
The knowledge that his wife had betrayed him—again—had filled him with a numbness that refused to go away. “Believe me, she’s plenty strong enough,” he groused. “Otherwise...”
His mother put a folded pink onesie next to the blue. “Not compassionate enough to help you deal with whatever lingering feelings you have about your learning disabilities?”
Wondering how long it was going to take him to recover this time, Wyatt paced. “I put those behind me years ago.”
“You can’t forgive her for what her dad did, then?”
Oh, for...! Wyatt swung back around. “I can’t forgive her for what she did. Not telling me that Paul was back in her life, trying to drag her into his mess. Or, swearing afterward, that if the same thing happened all over again, she wouldn’t change a thing.”
Lucille put little white undershirts in a separate stack. “She’s not allowed to have a different opinion than you?”
Wyatt scowled. “She’s not allowed to not trust me, Mom.”
“Did she say that?”
Of course she hadn’t! Wyatt tossed his empty bottle into the recycling bin. “Adelaide’s actions demonstrate it time and again! We elope. She leaves. We take a leap of faith ten years later and finally hook up. She changes her mind about turning that into something more, too. Then we find out her kids are mine, too, and decide to make the best of a difficult situation and raise our babies together. And what does she do? The one thing that will drive me around the bend! She puts herself and our kids in danger!”
“First of all, Wyatt, your children were safe in the ranch house with you. Only she went out to meet Paul. Second of all, I think she viewed it as putting herself on the line in order to keep not just you but the entire Lockhart clan out of jeopardy.” She slanted him a pointed look. “And it’s my understanding that the sheriff’s department had been surveilling her with her complete cooperation since last summer. They knew where Adelaide was, and who she was with, at all times. And she did that not only for our family, but because she saw it as the best way to protect you and your kids.”
“Sounds to me like a woman in love!” Sage said from the kitchen. “And if you don’t want to believe that, you should see some of the photos that just hit the internet news sites on this breaking story.”
She strode over with her tablet, x-ing out the screen that held the recipe she had been following. “Marco Maletti hit the jackpot with these.”
Too late, Wyatt recalled that the photographer had been hired by Hope to keep taking photos during the Laramie Chili Festival to feed to the press. There were pictures of him and Adelaide together, early in the morning, before she’d seen her dad, looking happy and completely wrapped up with each other. More with them both working the festival, in the go-fishing-game booth and the cutting-horse demonstration. Photos of him, with the twins in the kangaroo carrier, taking in the sights. And shots of Adelaide being unexpectedly waylaid in the parking lot of the fairgrounds. Her expression stricken, then happy. Heartbroken. Tense. Worried. Sober. And, as she finally walked away from Paul
Smythe, completely devastated.
Clearly she’d been through hell yesterday.
And what had he done?
Added to her misery.
He swore quietly.
“I can see you think you failed Adelaide,” Lucille said gently.
Why sugarcoat the situation? Aware this was just another “test” he had bombed, Wyatt shook his head. “I did.” And his screwup had nothing to do with his learning disabilities. It had to do with his heart.
No wonder Adelaide had run from him.
What was amazing was that she had ever stayed.
“You can still fix this,” his mother said quietly.
Could he?
The larger question—was it fair of him to even try?
All this time he had thought it was Adelaide’s issues keeping them apart. Now he saw it was his.
His cynicism.
His refusal to trust.
Never mind his unwillingness to understand, empathize...and forgive.
Shoulders slumping, he sat on the sofa and buried his head in his hands.
His mother put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “The point is we all make mistakes, son. You bungled it with Adelaide. Your father and I messed up with you. At the time, of course, your father and I both thought we were doing what was right for you, covering up the dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia. Shadowing you to make sure you didn’t make any public mistakes that would have caused you further embarrassment. But now I wonder if maybe he and I were covering up our own inadequacies, rather than what we perceived as your deficiencies.”
Aware he wasn’t the only one recently who had been driven to do some soul-searching, Wyatt listened.
“You see, your dad and I had to really struggle to leave our meager beginnings behind and achieve social and financial success. We didn’t want any of you children to have to fight that hard,” Lucille continued pensively.
“You wanted to protect us, and do everything you could for us because we were your kids. I get that, Mom. Now more than ever because of the twins.”
She nodded, accepting the partial reprieve. “But back then, I worried too much about what other people thought about us,” she admitted, voice quavering. “And not enough about what I felt and knew to be true deep in my heart, which is that academic success is only a small part of a person’s worth.” She paused to look into his eyes. “Courage and grit and determination and kindness and compassion are worth a whole hell of a lot more.”
Claiming the Texan's Heart Page 18
