And if Emily-Ann was going to be there, he didn’t think he could bear it, Taggart thought.
Blake frowned at him. “Why wouldn’t it be a good idea? I thought you and Emily-Ann were getting along great.”
Too restless to remain in the armchair, Taggart got up and poured himself a cup of hours-old coffee and added several spoons of sugar. “We were. But things have changed. We’re not seeing each other anymore.”
A long stretch of silence passed before Blake finally said, “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. I thought—”
Blake went silent again and Taggart slanted a curious glance in his direction. “You thought what?”
Leveling a shrewd look at him, Blake answered, “That you two might actually be getting serious about each other.”
The pain in Taggart’s chest was so unbearable he swallowed several gulps of the awful coffee before he could speak. “I don’t know why you’d come up with that idea. I’m not a serious kind of guy. Not where women are concerned. Emily-Ann figured that out for herself. And—that’s probably all for the best. No ties or broken hearts. You know what I mean.”
His expression solemn, Blake continued to study him. “Yeah. I know what you’re saying. You’ve already lost a woman you loved. You don’t want to go through it again.”
Taggart’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been talking to your mother.”
“No. Why? Have you?”
There was no way Taggart was going to break his promise to Maureen and tell Blake, or anyone for that matter, that the two of them had ridden to water pump number nine. Nor was he going to tell him the personal things they’d talked about.
“Uh—no. I just thought—well, women kind of have an intuition about men—and she might have voiced her thoughts about me to you.”
“No. But I read your background check before we ever hired you. I just never mentioned you’re a widower because there was no point in bringing the matter up.”
Taggart frowned. “But you think there’s a point now?”
“I do. Because I hate to see you make a big mistake. One you might regret for the rest of your life.”
Taggart swigged down the last of the coffee and tossed the foam cup into a trash basket next to the small refreshment table. “If you’re talking about Emily-Ann, that’s over. She wants more than I can give her.”
“Guess you’re talking about love and marriage now. Well, why shouldn’t she want that for herself? Why should she settle for anything less?”
Moving in with a guy has never been what I’ve planned for myself, Tag.
Emily-Ann’s words circled his weary brain, just as they had a thousand times since she’d walked out the door several nights ago. He’d hurt her terribly. He could see that now. But how did he go about trying to repair the damage? Would she even let him try?
With a heavy sigh, Taggart sank back into the armchair and dropped his head into his hands. “There’s no use in me trying to act like I’m a cool piece of steel, Blake. I’ve been miserable without Emily-Ann. I guess—I didn’t realize how much she’d come to mean to me until I—until she was gone.” Lifting his head, he cast Blake a wry look. “That’s the way it is with a fool, isn’t it? He never appreciates what he has until he loses it.”
Shaking his head, Blake said, “You’re not a fool, you’re just a little scared like every other man who’s ever loved a woman. You’ve already learned the hard way that standing at the altar and saying your vows doesn’t mean you get a guarantee with the marriage license. Regrettably, our mother learned the same thing. You think my brothers and I weren’t afraid to take wives and have children? We all wanted to run like chickens. But we all had sense enough to know that living alone and miserable wasn’t a good alternative.”
Dear God, he’d been alone for a long time and during those empty years he’d believed that was the answer, the alternative to having his heart torn apart. But Emily-Ann had shown him that living behind a guarded wall was not really living at all.
“I just wonder if Emily-Ann might give me a second chance.”
Smiling now, Blake picked up the purchase orders, then switched off the banker’s lamp on his desk. “I’ll have Mom invite her. In the meantime, you be thinking about what you’re going to say to her. Something meaningful and persuasive.”
“You mean like I’m a heel and a jerk?”
Blake laughed. “That’ll be a start.”
Seeing Blake was shutting things down for the night, Taggart rose to his feet. “I thought we were going to discuss the hay meadows?”
He grabbed his Stetson from a hall tree and levered it on his head. “Oh that. We’ll go over the hay situation later on.”
Taggart shot him a suspicious look. “Damn it, Blake, did you call me in here to talk about Emily-Ann?”
Blake let loose a guilty laugh. “Look, Tag, you might as well get used to us poking into your private life. You’re family now and we want everyone in our family to be happy.”
Happy? Was there a chance that he could still find happiness with Emily-Ann? He could only hope.
* * *
The next evening in the den of the Three Rivers Ranch house, Emily-Ann sat in an armchair with a dessert plate filled with strawberry torte carefully balanced on her knees. Normally she loved the sweet dish, but tonight she’d only managed three bites before her jangled nerves made it nearly impossible to swallow anything past her tight throat.
Camille must have noticed that she was merely pushing the dessert around the plate rather than eating it, because she suddenly spoke up.
“Emily-Ann, would you like for Jazelle to fetch you a different dessert? You’ve hardly touched the one you have. You might like the pecan pie better.”
Emily-Ann glanced over to a leather love seat, where her friend was cuddled comfortably next to her husband’s side.
“No!” she blurted out, while thinking she’d never touch another piece of pecan pie as long as she lived. After sharing one with Taggart, it would never taste the same. “I—uh—this is fine. I ate so much for dinner that I really don’t have room for dessert.”
Maureen walked up on the group just in time to hear Emily-Ann’s excuse for her lack of appetite. Now the woman ran a keen gaze over Emily-Ann’s face.
“You ate like a bird,” Maureen insisted. “And you look peaked, honey. Are you feeling okay?”
She shouldn’t have worn this damned yellow dress, Emily-Ann thought. It made her appear even more washed out than she already looked.
“Sure, I’m feeling wonderful.” Between bouts of nausea and having every nerve in her body clenched in a viselike grip, she felt just dandy, she thought sickly. “And dinner was delicious. I’m just feeling a little blue at the idea of telling Camille goodbye.”
“You can always come visit us,” Matthew spoke up. “We’d be glad to have you.”
“That’s very nice of you, Matthew. Maybe after your baby gets here I can drive down for a visit. But only for a very quick one. You two are going to have your hands full without added company.”
“Well, once baby Matthew gets here, she’s definitely going to have to put up with her mother and her sister for a few days,” Maureen said teasingly. “But we already have it in mind to shoo Camille off to the diner and keep the baby all to ourselves.”
“Hah!” Camille laughed. “Baby Matthew. Who says?”
“TooTall,” Matthew answered as if that guaranteed the gender of the baby would be male.
While the three of them continued to discuss the baby and TooTall’s prediction, Emily-Ann couldn’t help but notice how Matthew had his arm around his wife’s shoulders and how the man kept darting loving glances at her. How would that feel, she wondered?
The question had her directing a furtive gaze across the room where Taggart, Holt and Chandler were standing near a wet bar, seemingly in deep conversation.
Thankfully at dinner, Maureen had seated Emily-Ann several chairs on down the table from Taggart, which had made it much easier to avoid looking in his direction. And since then, she’d not once allowed her gaze to land on his handsome face. She couldn’t bear it. Just being in the same room with him made her feel sick and stupid and humiliated.
So far tonight, she’d avoided facing him head-on, but at some point before the evening ended she was going to have to speak with him about the baby. Was he going to be angry? Was he going to accuse her of using her body to set a snare for him? Even if he didn’t react quite that harshly, he was still going to throw some hard questions at her and how was she going to answer them?
Oh God, the mere thought of standing in front of him, telling him he was going to have a child, was enough to cause clammy sweat to pop out on her forehead and the base of her throat.
Certain if she didn’t get some fresh air, she was going to throw up in front of everyone, Emily-Ann jumped up from the couch. “Please excuse me,” she said, darting a frantic glance at Camille. “I, uh, need to step out for a moment.”
As she hurried toward the French doors that led out to the patio, she noticed Camille starting to rise to her feet, but Maureen said something that caused her daughter to immediately sink back down on the love seat.
Thank God, Emily-Ann thought, as much as she loved Camille, her frayed nerves weren’t ready for a pep talk or sermon from her dear friend.
She didn’t realize just how far she’d walked until she found herself standing by the cottonwood where she’d found Taggart the night of the party. Had she unconsciously sought out the spot, or was fate simply playing cruel tricks on her? It didn’t matter, she decided. Nothing mattered now, except the child growing inside her. His child.
She was leaning against the trunk of the tree, allowing the cool air to wash over her when she heard a twig snap behind her.
Thinking Camille had probably come out to check on her, she turned with a weary sigh, then promptly gasped at the sight of Taggart walking out of the shadows.
By the time he reached her side, she’d managed to gather herself enough to speak. “What are you doing out here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Getting some fresh air,” she said stiffly, then turned her back to him and gazed blindly out toward the ranch yard in the far distance.
He said, “I guess you came to dinner because of Camille.”
The familiar sound of his voice was like shards of glass raining over her. “And you’re here because of Matthew.”
“Yeah. We both had an obligation to show up for our mutual friends.”
She heard him take a step closer and the idea that he might actually touch her sent her shredded nerves into chaos.
“You purposely followed me out here,” she said in a strained voice. “Why?”
“I’ve been trying all evening to find a private moment to speak with you. When I saw you running out of the den, I decided to follow.”
Had she actually been running? Lord, everyone in the room must be thinking she’d lost her mind. And they wouldn’t be far off from the truth. For the past week and a half she’d done nothing but cry and throw up everything she put in her stomach. She’d reached the point where she hardly knew what she was doing or saying.
“Oh. Well, you’ve solved my problem. Because I’ve been wondering how I could talk to you—alone.”
“Really? You haven’t so much as looked at me tonight. I can’t imagine you wanting to talk to me,” he said. “You left the house more than a week ago and I’ve not heard a word from you. That doesn’t sound like a woman who wants to talk.”
Was it possible for a heart to split down the middle and still keep beating, she wondered? Because hers felt as though it was slowly and surely cracking.
“I’ve not heard a word from you, either. But then I didn’t expect to. You’ve made your feelings clear and I’ve accepted that what we had is over.”
“Is it?”
Suspicious now, she studied his shadowed face. “I haven’t changed my mind about anything, Tag. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t want you to change your mind,” he said flatly.
The pain in her chest was practically wiping out her ability to breathe and she had to turn her back to him as tears began to fill her eyes. “Oh. Well, that’s that. So if you don’t mind, would you please go back inside and leave me alone? I don’t want to—continue this conversation—not tonight.”
“Sorry, Emily-Ann, but I’m not going to leave you alone. Not until I say a few things that... I think you ought to hear.”
Bending her head, she swallowed hard. “All right. Say them,” she whispered.
His hands suddenly settled on her shoulders and all the familiar feelings of his touch poured through her like warm rain.
“I don’t know where to start. So I’ll just begin by saying I’ve been a complete jerk—an idiot. And I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.”
Hope tried to enter her heart, but she immediately slammed the door on it. His being sorry didn’t change the fact he wanted a bed partner rather than a wife.
“What do you have to be sorry about?” she mumbled the question. “Being honest?”
“But I haven’t been honest,” he admitted, then gently turned her so that she was facing him. “You’ve turned me into a habitual liar, Emily-Ann. Ever since I met you, I’ve continued to lie to you and myself. I’ve been telling myself I didn’t love you. That I didn’t need you in my life. Not as a wife or the mother of my children. But all along I knew I was lying and yet I was too much of a coward to face up to my real feelings.”
She shook her head with disbelief. “Are you trying to say that...you love me?”
“Yes. But I’m butchering it up pretty badly, aren’t I?”
A sob burst past her lips and then he was pulling her into his arms, holding her so tight that the side of her face was crushed against his chest.
“I’m hearing it, Tag. But I—”
“I know. You don’t believe me. But I promise, Emily-Ann, I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you just how much I love you. That is, if you’ll let me.”
Wedging her hands against his chest, she levered herself away enough to see his face. “I don’t understand, Tag. You didn’t want strings, or love or marriage. Why now?”
“Ask King. He’ll tell you how miserable I’ve been without you. It only took me a couple of days to realize that my job, my home, my life meant nothing if you weren’t with me.”
The reality that he really did love her was beginning to set in and the joy that was pouring into her heart was healing the broken cracks she’d felt only minutes before. “And the rest of the days we’ve been apart?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to get you back—wondering if you could possibly forgive me.” Reaching up, he stroked a hand over her hair. “I asked you to move in with me because—I was too afraid to ask you to be my wife. But I’m asking you now, Emily-Ann. Will you marry me?”
His declaration of love had been far more than she’d ever expected to hear from him. Now, he was proposing. It was almost more than she could take in. “Marry you!” she finally whispered. “Are you serious?”
He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a velvet ring box. “I went to town yesterday and bought this because I knew you’d be here tonight. Ever since I’ve been praying you’ll accept it.”
When he flipped open the lid, Emily-Ann sucked in a sharp breath. The engagement ring was a large square-shaped diamond, flanked by two smaller emeralds and set in filigreed gold. It was far beyond anything Emily-Ann had ever dreamed a man might give her.
“Oh my! Oh, Tag, it’s so beautiful! But it’s too much,” she protested. “A girl like me—”
“A girl like you deserves something beautiful,” he fin
ished.
Dazed, Emily-Ann watched him pull the ring from its velvet bed, but when he took her hand to push it onto her finger, she promptly shook her head and pulled back.
“I can’t accept it, Tag. Not yet. Not until I tell you something you need to know.”
Frowning, he dropped the ring into his shirt pocket. “Okay, what? That you don’t love me? Well, I don’t care. I’ll love you enough for both of us.”
She touched a hand to her forehead as her mind whirled with everything that had just happened. “I don’t know how to tell you this, except to just come right out with it. You’re going to be a father.”
It was his turn to look flabbergasted. “A father! Are you saying you’re pregnant?”
She nodded, still uncertain how the news of the baby was going to affect him. “About a month or so along. I guess it happened when we—uh—first got together. The doctor said my pill lost some of its strength because I had a cold, but that hardly changes the fact now.”
He leaned back his head and let out a joyous shout. “A baby! Our baby!”
Smiling ear to ear, he lifted her off her feet and whirled her around until she was laughing breathlessly.
“Are you really pleased, Tag?”
He set her back on her feet, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her for long, long moments. “Pleased? Oh, my darling, I couldn’t be any happier.”
Fifteen minutes ago, her heart was bursting with pain, now it was overflowing with joy. “I started to tell you when you first walked up. Now I’m so very glad I didn’t. I’ll always know that you wanted me to be your wife before you learned about the baby. I didn’t want you thinking I’d gotten pregnant to snare you.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “You got pregnant because you gave yourself to me. Because you put your love and trust in me. And I promise you, darling Emily-Ann, that I’ll cherish you and our children the rest of my life.”
The Texan Tries Again (Men 0f The West Book 44) Page 19