by Lilian Darcy
Rob couldn’t believe how fiercely Melinda faced him when they reached the truck. The parking area was crowded with vehicles and yet almost deserted of people. Nobody lingered here, where the dying fall grass of the temporary lot had been ground into the dirt by heavy tire tracks. They hurried in to watch the rodeo, or they drove off home, tired and ready.
“Tell me why they wouldn’t blame themselves!” she almost screamed at him.
He tried to stay calm and gentle. “Because I don’t blame them. Do you? It was the chemistry in your body, not them.”
“Stop being so reasonable.” Her eyes glittered with angry tears.
“What?”
“You do this!” The tears didn’t spill and her voice only shook a little. She was too angry to cry, and he was astonished by it. Bewildered. “You treat me like I have to be soothed. Always. Like we can’t have a real argument. But we can. Tell me why I’m wrong, and tell me for real. Get angry with me. Heaven knows, I’ve been failing you as a wife for twenty-six years, you must have some anger built up in there.”
What did she want? Did she mean it? “I – Yes, sometimes. Not angry with you. You haven’t failed.” He was a man, so his thoughts went to sex. She had a wonderful body, and she made love willingly, responsively. Shyly, sometimes, but he loved that, too. How had she failed?
She didn’t mean sex of course.
“Yes, angry with me,” she insisted.
“No. With life. Angry at how stupidly fertile we must have been, to get three of them at once. Hell, what were the odds? Why did we think it would be efficient to try for a third baby so we could have our whole family close in age? We must have been crazy.”
She nodded, as if she was satisfied, and he realized he’d let his voice rise. What, she liked that?
“Angry with both of us, I guess,” he revised.
Her cheeks were full of pink color, and her eyes were still glittering. “Angry with me because I’ve never wanted anyone to be told,” she suggested.
He thought about soothing her again. The habit was ingrained. But then he realized that, yes, if there was a reason he was angry with her, this was it. Not wanting people told was a kind of martyrdom, and he didn’t want her to be a martyr. “People know there’s something wrong,” he said.
“Oh, I know that! Melinda MacCreadie is the vaguest woman on earth.”
“What? Who said that about you?”
“Carol Bingley. She didn’t know I overheard.”
“God, I’ll kill that woman.”
“I’m vague, Rob. I can’t organize myself out of a paper bag.”
“Who said that?” If she wanted him angry, he now officially was. Steaming with it. Aching. Exploding.
“Your mother.”
He mentally picked up the tightly-bound mental bale of hay that was his relationship with his mother and heaved that aside for another time. “So why can’t we tell them? So they’ll understand?”
“Because then they’ll feel sorry for me, and I don’t want that.”
“They’ll help you.”
“They help me anyhow. Kate helped for years, even though we never spelled it out to her.”
“And Kate got angry with you, sometimes.” He wasn’t sure what argument he was making any more. Melinda’s own, maybe.
“And I liked that better than if she’d pitied me.”
“I want people told,” he said, since there was honesty flaming in the air all around them. “It’s time. Way past time. I can’t stand the secrecy of it any more. I can’t stand the way people misinterpret how you are. I really can’t, Melinda.”
She nodded slowly, with a look of… he had to call it satisfaction. She liked this. The plain talking. The frustration expressed out loud. She wanted it.
“I don’t care how we do it,” he added. “Put an announcement in the newspaper.”
She laughed, recognizing that this was a joke. The raised voices and frank talking seemed to have energized her, focused her, and in a blinding flash of understanding, he knew how right she was, and how he’d been getting worse and worse over the years. Protecting her more and more. Treating her more and more like the child she sometimes seemed to be, in certain areas, but wasn’t.
He had to remember that. Shoot, he had to! She was right.
But he was right, too. About telling her secret. It was time. He thought it was no accident that they’d reached this point today, of all days, at the rodeo. It was about remembering their first kiss, today. It was about Jamie bringing that Australian girl out to the ranch to ride yesterday, when he’d never done such a thing before. It was about both Rob and Melinda wondering if Jamie and Tegan had started something serious.
The kids were all in their mid to late twenties, now. For better or for worse, they would be partnering up soon—for life, he hoped, because he believed in that—and the prospect was on both their minds. Melinda would be a mother-in-law, and then a grandmother. She didn’t want new people… new family… tip-toeing around her the way Rob had grown accustomed to doing. And he didn’t want them wondering why the hell she couldn’t get herself together. He wanted them told, frankly and matter-of-factly.
“You’re right,” they both said it, almost in the exact same moment.
Then they laughed, the laughter spinning strands of connection around them, bringing them closer.
“You first,” Melinda said.
“You’re right that I haven’t been treating you the way I should. You’re right I should tell you when I’m angry. I should show it. Say it. I love you, Melinda.” Oh, shoot, tears. Sentimental rancher, who didn’t have these kinds of conversations enough, and couldn’t cope with them when they happened… “I love you, so I try to protect you, but that’s not what you want, is it?”
“No,” she said softly. “Not what I want. Not what I need. But I’m glad you love me. So glad, Rob.”
“Of course I do.”
“I love you, too.” They smiled at each other, as if it was still new, and still a sweet secret. “My turn, now?” she suggested.
“Go for it.”
“You’re right. I – I’m going to hate it, but you’re right, we need to tell people. The kids, anyhow. So that when they bring a boyfriend or a girlfriend home, like yesterday… I wonder if she is a girlfriend, Rob, do you think?”
“Don’t get distracted,” he growled.
“Yes. Yes. Sorry.” She flapped her hands. “We can’t have a whole lot of new people thinking I’m the vaguest woman on earth. That’s worse, when I think about it, than if the kids blame themselves a little bit.”
“They won’t.”
“You really think?”
He gathered her into his arms, all the soft, familiar shape of her. “They love you, too, remember, Melinda? And they know how much you love them. Would you really wish they hadn’t been born, even though it was crazy, those early years, even if it meant you wouldn’t have collapsed that day?”
“No,” she said. “No, I wouldn’t wish they hadn’t been born, not for a second.”
“So…?”
“We’re standing in the parking lot.” She looked around as if she’d forgotten.
“Seemed to work out pretty well. We earned a few looks, when we were yelling.”
“Oh, we did? I didn’t notice!”
“But they were strangers so I don’t care.”
“Neither do I.”
“What next? Want to go home?”
She looked at him, shy and just a little bit wicked. “We’ve had a good time, this afternoon. We’ve had an important time.”
“I think you’re right.”
“So maybe we could stay here and be rodeo sweethearts for a little bit longer? The popcorn smells awfully good.”
“Let’s do that…” He let her loose, then reached out and took her hand, and the charms on her bracelet tickled his wrist as their fingers laced together.
About the Author
Lilian Darcy is a five-time Rita™ Award nominee who has written
over eighty romances for Harlequin, as well as several mainstream novels. She has also written for Australian theatre and television under another name, and has received two award nominations for Best Play from the Australian Writers Guild. In 1990 she was the co-recipient of an Australian Film Institute award for best TV mini-series.
An excerpt from
Tempt Me, Cowboy
Megan Crane
Copyright © 2013