Rancher's High-Stakes Rescue
Page 22
Josh pictured Kate’s tear-stained face as she turned away from him and climbed in her cab. Her disappointment. Her heartache. Her disillusionment. He’d failed her.
“So do something about it,” Brady urged his father. “I can drive you to a clinic today. I have faith in you, Dad. You can beat this.”
Kate, do you trust me? How many times had he asked her to put her faith in him on their perilous journey? And she had. Josh heaved a heavy sigh. Trust had to be earned. He had to regain her faith, her trust. But how? She wouldn’t take his calls, answer his emails or texts.
Roy closed his eyes, bowed his head and whispered, “Okay. I’ll go.”
And in that instant, Josh knew what he had to do, too.
Chapter 17
Josh stared through the windshield as he drove past the grazing pastures. An all-too-familiar ache settled inside him. He’d taken for granted that the land would be in his family for generations to come, just like it had been for decades before. And yet other ranches in the area had failed. Drought, poor investments, recession. Neighboring ranches had been foreclosed on, stock, equipment and property sold to pay off debt. He’d even accompanied his father to a couple of the auctions as a teenager. They’d acquired one of their best breeding bulls at a foreclosure sale. Josh’s gut clenched at the thought of his family’s business being sold off piecemeal in that fashion.
“So, what are you going to say to her?” Piper’s question yanked him out of his deliberations.
He shifted his gaze to his sister, who would drive the truck home from the airport. “I honestly don’t know. I’m hoping I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”
“You’re just going to wing it?” She seemed stunned. “Don’t you think winning her back deserves at least a little thought and preparation? A romantic speech? A grand gesture? A—”
“That’s not how I operate. I’m more...extemporaneous.” Partly true. He knew some of what he wanted to say, but he wanted Kate to be the first to hear it, not Piper. The rest would come from his heart.
“Well, good luck, Doofus. I want you to be happy. And if Kate is the one...”
“She is. I’m sure she is.”
* * *
“So, I talked to Zane this morning before I headed to the airport,” Dawn said via a phone call as Kate drove home from the office. “Because all business has been suspended until the insurance company officials are satisfied with repairs and reinspection of all aspects of McCall Adventures, our contract for marketing consultation is on hold, as well.”
Kate squeezed the steering wheel. She knew this conversation was necessary, but she wasn’t ready to deal with the McCalls’ account. She might never be.
“Zane has already paid our firm for work done to date. We’ll be fine on that score,” Dawn said.
“But will the Double M and McCall Adventure Ranch survive this setback?” Kate mused, half to herself, half to Dawn.
“Not our problem, honey. Oh, they’re boarding my flight. Gotta run.”
Kate bade her friend safe travels and disconnected. Having endured a trying and tiring first day back at the office, she wanted nothing more than to pass the evening with a bottle of wine and mindless TV shows to distract her from the abyss in her heart. She’d spent the day answering numerous questions about her trip, the zip-line accident and the remnant scratches and bruises scattered across her skin, all reminders of Josh and his deception.
She’d brought in Chinese food, which she had no appetite for, and had just settled on her couch with a glass of merlot and Sadie on her lap, when her doorbell chimed. She considered ignoring it. She didn’t want to buy magazines from the neighbor’s kid or sign for any packages. Sadie raised her head when the bell sounded but didn’t vacate her lap, another sign she should ignore the person at the door. But the visitor persisted, ringing her bell again and adding a knock. Her car was in the driveway and her lights were clearly on, so she couldn’t very well pretend she wasn’t home. Maybe if she—
“Kate?” a male voice called from her front door. “Are you there? Please open the door.”
She gasped, startling Sadie from her lap.
Josh? Here?
After taking a swig of merlot to steady her nerves, she headed for the door on shaky legs. In the foyer, she paused and peeked out her peephole to confirm her suspicion.
Heart galloping, she spied Josh’s slightly distorted face, broad shoulders and arm in a blue sling.
He rang her doorbell again and banged on her door, sending a fresh wave of adrenaline skittering along her nerves.
“Kate, please! Give me a chance to explain!” he called. “I just want—”
She opened the door, and the rest of his sentence fell away. His expression seemed both relieved and terrified. Or maybe that was just her projecting her own tangled feelings onto him.
“Hi,” he said, fidgeting with the cowboy hat in his hands.
She gave him a stiff nod in greeting. She summoned a memory of his hat washing away in the floodwaters and mumbled, “You...got a new hat.”
He looked down as if surprised to find himself holding the black Stetson. “Yeah. I mean, no. I had another.” He swallowed. “Can I come in?”
Josh was here. In Dallas. At her home.
“How did you find me? Find my house?”
He turned up a palm. “Everything’s on the internet these days. Welcome to the age of no privacy.”
She sagged against the door. How many times had she wished Jason would show up at her house to apologize for hurting her, to tell her he was getting a divorce and wanted to be with her? Of course, Jason hadn’t shown up, and she hadn’t dared to hope that Josh would. Why travel down a road that led to deeper despair and a sharper sense of having been played the fool?
But Josh was here.
She drew a shallow breath into lungs tight with apprehension. Stepped back. Opened the door wider.
As he stepped into her foyer, Sadie, shy around strangers, scampered quickly past them and up the stairs to hide.
Josh tracked her black-and-white cat with his gaze. “You have a cat.”
“Yeah.”
“You never mentioned...” He hesitated, then said, “My family has a cat. Zeke. He’s a real goofb—”
“I’m sure you didn’t travel all the way here to talk about cats,” she said, cutting him off. She didn’t close the door, still uncertain she was going to let him stay. She was in no mood for chitchat or rehashing how he’d deceived her.
His expression darkened, chastened. “No. I didn’t.” He exhaled deeply and met her unflinching stare. “I came to say I’m sorry.”
She clutched the doorknob tighter, needing the support when her knees wobbled. Moisture crept to her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to fight the tears. An apology was a start, but was that all? She held her breath, waiting him out.
I care about you. His bland reply to her profession of love replayed in her head and opened the scabs on her heart.
“Kate, I know what you overheard me say to Zane in the stable, but...you misunderstood.”
She raised her eyebrows and screwed her face into an expression that said, Really? That’s how you want to start this conversation?
And he balked. “Wait, that’s not what I... Can I start over?”
She studied the panicked look in his eyes and the fine sheen of sweat on his brow, despite the mild temperature outside and air-conditioning inside. Flop sweat? Was he that anxious about what he had to say? A pulse of sympathy waded through the tension in her chest.
She closed the door, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt. “All right. In here.”
He followed her into her living room, where she reclaimed her spot on the couch and lifted her wine for another gulp.
“Your condo is great.” He cast a sweeping glance around, a nervous grin tugging his lips.
He lowered himself onto the sofa beside her, setting his hat on her coffee table. His brow dipped, and his gaze softened with regret or concern or some other painful emotion that clouded his sky blue eyes. “I screwed up, Kate. I admit it. I made bad choices that hurt you, and I’m very sorry.”
When he paused, searching her face as if looking for an answer, she said, “So you came all this way to apologize?”
He rubbed a hand on his chin. His knee. Through his hair. Clearly he was nervous, and her traitorous heart felt sorry for him. She squared her shoulders when her instinct nudged her to put him at ease. She would not let him off as easily as accepting his apology. “Well?”
Josh cleared his throat. “Partly. And I came, partly, because you wouldn’t answer my calls. But mostly because you deserve to hear what I have to say in person.”
She reached for her wine, and the merlot sloshed as she brought it to her lips, hand trembling. But even the wine couldn’t calm the jitters dancing through her. “And what is that?”
He eyed her glass, wet his lips, and she realized she hadn’t offered him anything to drink. Bad Southern woman!
But then, this wasn’t the typical social visit, and she’d been distracted. Maybe in a moment, once he spit out whatever he was trying to say...
“When I left home to come here, I intended to explain why I didn’t wait for Zane at the campsite, why I let you believe forging on was our only option.” He pressed his mouth in a grim line before continuing. “I was going to repeat my argument that I hadn’t technically said we had to go on, but that I’d asked you to trust me, that I’d urged you to keep going because I thought taking on the challenges of the trip would be helpful to you in overcoming your fears.”
She shot him an ironic glare. “That’s what you were going to say? Seems to me that you just did.” She set her glass down with more force than necessary and straightened her spine. “And when exactly did I ask you to be my therapist? For you to put this off on me, as if it were my fault that—”
“No! Not your fault. That’s not what I said.” His tone rose several decibels, and his eyes narrowed. “And for the record, you did face some big obstacles with aplomb and grit.” He reached for her hand, and her pulse scrambled. “You showed an inner strength and courage that you should be proud of. You see that, don’t you?”
She tried to remove her hand from his, but his grip tightened.
Sighing, she gave a quick nod. “So what? I did what I had to do when I faced no other choice. Anybody would do the same. But that doesn’t mean—”
“You didn’t have to jump off the cliff at the swim hole. You didn’t have to go in the swollen river to save that rabbit. You didn’t have to swing that limb at the bear when she attacked.”
She snorted derisively. “Like I was going to stand back and let the bear maul you? That doesn’t count.”
Josh’s eyes widened. “Hell, yes, it does!”
She flashed back to the moment she’d raised the thick stick to defend Josh from the sow. She’d been terrified, but a deep-seated need to protect Josh had overridden all else. Because she’d already fallen in love with him by then. Not that she wouldn’t have helped anyone else under those circumstances, but Josh—
“If I make only one point tonight,” he said, cutting into her thoughts, “if I convince you of only one thing before you kick me out, please let it be that truth.” He brushed his fingertips along her cheek, and the affection in his eyes raked her with bittersweet longing. “You are so much more than you give yourself credit for. So much braver and resourceful. Resilient and strong. You proved that on our trip many times over. And for that much, I’m not sorry.”
“I—” she started, then took a breath. Took a moment to really reflect. To remember the events of the trip, not through the lens of heartache for his betrayal and lies, but from a deeply personal perspective.
The stark fear of the zip line breaking, then the comfort of Josh’s arms after he rescued her. Reliving the events of her childhood tragedy as she confided them to Josh and sensing that the memories were loosening their grip on her. His challenge to jump off the rock wall at the swimming hole and sharing with Josh the kind of exhilaration she used to seek out for thrills.
On the flight home, in an effort to occupy her mind, she’d flipped through a travel magazine and read an article about scuba diving in underwater caves. And the idea hadn’t unsettled her. She’d been intrigued. Titillated. Tempted. She hadn’t considered the implication of that reversal before now, but the old adventurer of her childhood had stirred to life again. And she wasn’t shrinking away with the doubts and nightmare flashes that used to haunt her.
“Kate?” Josh angled his head and gave her a querying look after a few moments of her reverie.
“Okay,” she said with a nod. “I’ll give you that. I have made progress in staring down my fears, my past. I did things on our trip I never would have thought I could do. And—” she cracked a smile “—I am proud of myself.”
His own lopsided grin warmed his face. “Good.”
“But—” She aimed a finger at him and lowered her brow. “That doesn’t excuse you lying to me. And it doesn’t change my hurt over—” falling in one-sided love with you.
She bit her tongue, swallowed her words. She really had no right to blame Josh for her losing control of her emotions. He’d never made promises or professions to her. Losing her heart to him, when experience and caution warned her otherwise, was on her.
He scooted closer to her, until his knee bumped hers and he could cradle her cheek with his good hand. “Which brings us back to my reasons for being here.” He took a deep breath, and his face filled with strain and...was it fear? Grief?
Her heart bumped harder.
“All of what I just said is what I originally planned to say, but I’ve recently realized I owed you more. And I had to be truly honest with myself in order to find what I needed to tell you.” She felt a shimmy from his fingers as they cupped her cheek. “On the plane, I realized that the real, bare-bones truth of why I ignored Zane’s directions to stay at the camp, why I refused to give up on the trip... I was scared.” He huffed a laugh with no humor. “Me, the fearless McCall triplet. The risk-taker. Mr. YOLO himself was scared.” He paused and shook his head. “Ironic, huh? I told myself I was defying Zane because I didn’t want you to be scared anymore, but I was the one who was terrified.”
She peered deeply into his eyes. “Of failing.” She said it matter-of-factly, and he raised his eyebrows.
“Well...yeah.”
“And not just of losing your new business venture or even your family’s ranch. Am I right?”
He blinked at her, his expression stunned. “Yeah. It’s more about everything that losing the ranch would mean to my family. My dad already has high blood pressure. Losing the ranch could be devastating to his health. I’ve heard of ranchers who had to sell, file for bankruptcy, and they ended up killing themselves out of a sense of despair and failure.”
She gripped his wrist, her chest aching, “Oh, Josh. How terrible!”
“And my mom... The ranch has been in her family for four generations. It would crush her to have to sell.” He shook his head. “Not to mention the people who’d be out of work, without a home. People I care about, people who are family to me.”
She could see his concern and compassion written in the lines that bracketed his eyes and mouth. The cowboy she’d presumed to be a shallow, womanizing thrill seeker had proven again and again to be a deeply caring, protective man who put others first.
“My sister just moved home to be part of the adventure business that I dreamed up. I owe it to her to make the business a success.
” He was talking faster now, the words spilling out like a pump that had been primed and now poured forth all that had been hidden in the well of his soul. He moved his hand to his leg, where he rubbed his palm, clearly agitated. “And Zane...he’s been more than my brother all these years. He’s my best friend. He may be my opposite in a lot of ways, but we are like two halves of a whole. I know how much he has invested in the new company. Not just his time, money and energy, but his passion and heart. If the adventure business fails, where will we—”
She put her hand on his face, and he stopped, his expression bereft. For a moment he gazed at her, silent, as if centering himself.
Finally he whispered, “I’ve been the irresponsible, reckless twin all my life. I guess I played into that label, because it was a way to be different from Zane, to have my own identity. But with the adventure ranch, I had a chance to be someone else. To be the one who helped hold on to the ranch and preserve the family’s heritage. I wanted to use what I did best to save my family. When the zip line fell, once I knew you were safe, all I could think about was how I couldn’t fail my family. They are everything to me.”
“You did your best. You weren’t to blame for the damage the vandal did to the zip line.”
“The vandal...” Josh’s jaw tightened, his mouth pressing in a taut line, and his face flushed. “Damn, but the idea that someone was going after my family in such damaging ways, that someone could get hurt...” He shook his head, his gaze distant. “At that point, to me, giving up on the trip was letting the bastard win. As good as handing him the keys to the ranch, with all my family’s history and hard work cast aside as garbage.”
He closed his eyes, clearly fighting to bring his emotions under control.
She wrapped her hand around his, the need to support him stronger than her need to protect her fragile emotions.
“So...” He lifted his gaze from their hands to meet her gaze. “That’s what I couldn’t bring myself to say before now. What I only just figured out for myself. I dragged you through the trip, cajoled you into going, against Zane’s directive, because I feared failing my family. And I’m sorry I deceived you about it.”