No! It couldn’t be, she told herself as she felt her body slumping to the floor. It simply wasn’t possible. Caleb wouldn’t do this to her, not after everything they’d been through together. Not after he’d told her he loved her, she reasoned.
She had no idea how long she sat on the floor. Sierra couldn’t force her body to move, although her every instinct was telling her to get as far away from Caleb as possible. Caleb! She couldn’t even think of him now without a sharp pain slicing through her mid-section - the pain of the most devastating betrayal.
Much later the slamming of a door signaled his arrival and Sierra froze as she listened to the clattering of his boots on the hardwood floor. She simply sat there on the floor, unable to move, her body frozen in place.
“Hey, Sierra. Are you here?” Caleb called out. “I saw your truck out front. Please tell me you picked up some Mexican food or something. I’m starved.”
She looked up as he pushed open the bedroom door, her mind instantly registering the fact that he looked the same as he’d looked when she’d left him this morning. He was still dangerously attractive. He hadn’t sprouted devil’s horns or radically changed his appearance in any visible way that might show her that he was no longer the person she’d believed him to be. No, Sierra thought grimly, life was never that simple.
The bad guy didn’t always go around wearing a black hat.
A feeling of intense shame passed through her as she saw the look of disbelief and disappointment etched on Caleb’s face. He’d caught her red-handed going through his things! Regardless of his deception, a part of her felt mortified. That feeling lasted for all of two seconds. When she heard him bark, “What do you think you’re doing going through my things?” her feelings of shame transformed into a white-hot, blazing anger.
Chapter Twelve
“Sierra! Answer me! What are you doing going through my drawers?” Caleb stood in the doorway of the bedroom, his big arms folded across his chest, a look of deep concern etched on his face, his amber eyes reflecting disappointment and hurt. And there was something else hovering in his eyes, a dark emotion she’d never seen before, one that nearly cut her to the quick as soon as she recognized it. Guilt.
“What is this?” Still feeling numb, Sierra held up the aged, wrinkled piece of paper, her fingers shaking with the shock of her discovery. Although the ink on the paper was faded, there was no misunderstanding the words on the document. She’d read the words with a sinking feeling in her heart, the pain of Caleb’s betrayal slicing through her. It was a miracle, she thought, that she was still standing, not to mention breathing and talking. She wanted to sink down into a deep, dark hole and die.
“It’s not what you think,” he said in a quiet voice.
“No?” she asked coldly, her rage hidden beneath a thin veneer of civility. “Then tell me what it is then. Tell me why it’s not what it looks like.”
Caleb groaned and put his head in his hands, cursing himself for being such a simple fool. He should've ripped up the documents days ago, but for some reason he'd held onto them, keeping them tucked away in his jeans drawer. “I never meant for you to see these papers. It wasn’t something that I was prepared to go through with. I promise you, I wasn’t going to hurt your family with these papers.”
Sierra smoothed out the wrinkled paper and began to read aloud. “I, Caleb Matthews, grandson of Jock Matthews, am hereby petitioning the court for possession of the Diamond Lil ranch currently owned by Lilliana Rose Jackson. I am hereby asking that the land be turned over to myself as the legal guardian of Jock Matthews. Enclosed is the original deed for the land comprising the Diamond Lil.” .
Caleb’s face twisted with pain as Sierra read the devastating words. The words came at him like a grenade, along with the realization of how deeply she must think he'd betrayed her trust. And he almost had, he reminded himself. He'd almost struck out at the entire Jackson family out of his deep feelings of bitterness and pain. But he hadn't been able to do it when push came to shove. A part of him had always resisted going that last mile to obtain his revenge.
“Did you write this?” she asked in an incredulous voice, her dark eyes exhibiting such pain that it made Caleb’s heart lurch painfully.
He slid his gaze over her, taking in the coldness of her expression and the icy sound of her voice. She’d never sounded like this before, so cold and angry. So distant. What could he say to change things back to the way they’d been this morning? He’d give anything to see her smile or hear the tinkling sound of her laughter. He’d give anything to hold her in his arms and soothe away all her doubts.
“Yes, I wrote it,” he answered truthfully. “But-.”
“Liar! You pretended to care about me!” she screamed as she lunged for him, her fists flailing around as her punches connected with his chest.
Caleb grabbed her wrists and gently twisted them behind her back, his eyes silently pleading with her for forgiveness. He backed her into the wall so that she couldn’t escape him. “Listen to me, Sierra,” he said in a soothing voice. “Just listen. Yes, at one point in time I was going to petition the courts to uphold this deed. But that was before you came back to Briarwood. Before we fell back in love and I realized we had a future together. It was a stupid, impulsive thing that I never intended to follow through with.”
“Where did this deed come from? Where did you drag this up from?” she interrupted, her dark eyes glistening with fury. “It can’t possibly be real.”
Caleb let out an agonized groan that soundly awfully like surrender to his own ears. There was no way out of the mess he’d created, other than to tell the truth.
“I was doing some cleaning at Jock’s cabin a while back when he was in the hospital. I came across this paperwork and I took it after I realized its importance. Jock has no idea that I found this. He's been sitting on this document for all these years.”
“Is it even real? Or did you fake that too?” she asked bitterly, her lips curled upwards in contempt. At this moment she hated him and she wanted to slam him into the ground for playing her like a pawn in a chess game. She’d thought that he loved her and instead he was using her in some elaborate game of revenge.
“It’s authentic,” he said quietly. “Your grandmother placed the deed in Jock’s name, presumably because they were getting married in a matter of days. It must’ve been her wedding present to him.”
“And in all these years he never challenged it. He never tried to take it away from her,” she said in a dazed voice, her mouth twisting bitterly as she compared Jock’s actions against his grandson’s. Obviously, his grandfather was a man of honor, while Caleb was a liar and a cheat.
“No,” Caleb acknowledged, “he never did. For all these years that deed has been collecting dust among Poppy’s mementos.”
Sierra shook her head in disbelief as she addressed Caleb. “Why?” she asked bleakly. “Did you want revenge against me? My family?”
“Don’t do this,” he pleaded, his eyes tortured and defeated as he begged her to lay the issue to rest. It was too painful to dredge up all the bitter feelings that had set him on this course of action. They’d rehashed the past so many times already, he thought miserably, and finally reached an understanding of each other’s grief and loss. He didn’t want to jeopardize all that. He couldn’t.
He simply shook his head and refused to answer, knowing that if he did so he would be unleashing Pandora’s Box, a crazy swirl of emotions that was better left buried.
“Answer me!” she hissed. “Did you want revenge against me and my family?”
Caleb slammed his fist against the wall and bellowed, “Yes, once upon a time I did want revenge, against you and your family. But that-.”
Once again, she cut him off with a question. “And this deed to the Diamond Lil...was this your revenge?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, her throat feeling raw with pain. She had to get through this, she reminded herself. There would be time enough later for tears and sorrow, but for the moment s
he needed to get the facts straight on Caleb’s deception. She needed to know if she was going to lose her beloved ranch. She needed to know what she was up against.
“Yes, I wanted revenge. I wanted to hurt you and your whole family because of what happened between us and the way Lilliana treated me like garbage. When my father got injured in that accident on the your family's oil rig I thought it was negligence. Right or wrong, when I came across the deed I decided to take matters into my own hands.”
“So when did you decide to start slaughtering the animals?”
He blinked at her. “What did you say?”
“I said, when did you decide to start slaughtering animals?”
He shook his head. “You don’t mean that. You know I’d sooner poison myself than strike out at a defenseless animal.”
Bitterness filled her eyes and for a moment she glared at him with a look of pure hatred. “I used to know a lot of things about you, Caleb. A long time ago when the world was a much simpler place. Those days are gone forever. You’ve shown me that you’re a lot uglier than I could ever imagine.”
Caleb reached out and pulled her toward him by the wrist. “What happened to you?” Caleb asked, his face filled with disbelief at her cold words and tough stance. “The girl I used to know wasn’t suspicious or doubting. She would never have believed that I was capable of such despicable acts. The girl I remember was trusting and gentle. What happened to her along the way? How did she get so lost?”
“She grew up, Caleb,” Sierra snarled in a voice laced with bitterness. “She became acquainted with the real world and stopped believing in fairy tales. So, forgive me if don’t moon all over you like I used to. I’m not that girl anymore.”
“No, you’re not,” Caleb said bluntly. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. It was almost as if the old Sierra had died overnight and this stranger standing before him had taken her place. She sounded so bitter, as if life had dealt her a terrible hand and she had been forced to deal with the ugly consequences. He was the one who should be bitter over the past, and yet somehow he’d softened and decided to trust her again with his heart.
Where did Sierra get off having a chip on her shoulder? He hadn’t acted on any of his plans; he’d done nothing so far to hurt her family, even though he’d had the documents in his possession for well over a year.
“Don’t get holier-than-thou with me,” she said with an indelicate snort, her hands defiantly placed on her hips. She looked him up and down, her blazing eyes burning a hole straight through him, her disdain palpable. “You haven’t exactly been acting like Prince Charming since I’ve been back. You’ve seen a lot of changes yourself in the past few years.”
Caleb’s voice suddenly quieted and he wore a sorrowful expression as he said, “Maybe you just never knew me, Sierra. I really haven’t changed that much. You might just have to look a bit closer to see what’s always been there.” He raised his hand and thumped it against his heart as he uttered a silent prayer that she could feel the love radiating from within him.
“Liar,” she whispered, as she remembered the gentle boy with the warm brown eyes and the tender talk. “The boy I knew would never have tried to take the Diamond Lil away from my family. And he wouldn’t have spoken words of love to me while betraying me. He wouldn’t have been capable of such a grand deception.”
“The boy you knew was capable of making mistakes. Back then my number one mistake was not running after you and forcing you to tell me the truth. I was too proud and too bitter. But I’ve changed. Yeah, I’m still a little bitter over the past, but I’ve learned to put a lid on that bitterness. I would never have used those papers against you. I swear!”
For a moment Sierra faltered, her emotions swayed by his fervent vows of innocence. Caleb couldn’t imagine, she thought, how much she wanted his words to be true. She’d believed him when he’d murmured words of love, no doubt because she needed to believe that he shared her powerful feelings. He’d seemed so sincere, so filled with love and forgiveness. His tender kisses had made her soul sing with joy. Had it all been a lie? Were all his tender moves toward her merely a cover for his vicious plot to strip her family of its legacy?
He held out his hand to her, his eyes imploring her to join hands with him, to believe in him, to love him. Instinctively Sierra knew that once she crossed this bridge she could never turn back.
No, she couldn’t do it. Caleb had already proven to her that he couldn’t be trusted. How many more chances was she going to give him to break her heart? How much more proof did she need of his duplicity? How many more times was she going to play the fool?
She walked toward him, her face cold and distant. They stood face to face, gazes locked. She slapped the deed against his chest.
“Take this deed and choke on it! You just try and take the Diamond Lil away from me, Caleb. Go ahead and try. I’ll fight you tooth and nail!” Her eyes blazed like wildfire, sparks of anger shooting from their depths like fireworks in a moonless sky. She backed away from him and turned on her heel, her light footsteps echoing throughout Caleb’s place.
Caleb cringed as he heard the door slam, his heart lurching painfully inside his chest as he heard the rumble of her truck from outside and the eventual roar as the car took off.
He didn’t dare follow after her, although every impulse in his brain was telling him to do just that. He knew he couldn’t. She was running from him, as surely as she had run away all those years ago. He had promised himself a long time ago that he would never chase a woman, never love a woman, never devote himself body and soul to a woman. Never again. Ever since Sierra had come waltzing back into town she’d turned his entire life upside down, forcing him to go back on every vow he’d uttered.
She’d made him love her again. No, that wasn't true. He’d never stopped loving her in the first place. He’d denied it to himself a million times, swearing it wasn’t so...but he couldn’t deny it any longer. He loved Sierra. And if he wasn’t mistaken, history was repeating itself. Once again, Sierra had walked straight out of his life.
***
Caleb entered the doors of the diner like a rocket, his eyes peeled for Cruz. The moment he spotted him he let out a sigh of relief and beat a fast path to his table.
“I need to know everything there is to know about Sam Jarvis.” Caleb plunked his Stetson down on the table, his jerky movements causing a half-filled coffee cup to tumble over and spew its inky contents.
“What the-?” Cruz yelled as he jumped up from the table, barely missing being scalded by the hot liquid. Without skipping a beat he flashed Caleb one of his darkest, most brooding glares, his lips curling upwards in disgust.
“Sorry about the coffee, Cruz, but I’m not a man in my right mind, now,” Caleb explained as he reached for a napkin and began to mop up the table. “I’m about to ask you for one big favor, Matt.”
Cruz groaned upon hearing his first name tumble out of Caleb’s lips. Whenever his best called him Matt instead of Cruz it was a sure sign that trouble was brewing on the horizon. Cruz gestured toward one of the chairs and said, “Take a seat and stop all that babbling. Give it to me straight!”
“Something strange happened today. To make a long story short, Sierra had an appointment this morning with Sam Jarvis-.”
“So what’s so strange about a meeting with Jarvis?”
Caleb leaned across the table, his movements animated as he tried to get his point across to Cruz. “Well, the way I figure it, he had to have said something this morning to Sierra that made her doubt me. Why else would she go poking around my drawers?”
He held up his hands. “Don’t blame the messenger, but she had reason to doubt you, Caleb. You were planning the coup of the century right under her nose. Taking into account your tangled romantic history with Sierra and your father’s accident on the oil rig, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you had an axe to grind with her family.”
“The only planning I did was in my imag
ination. You know as well as I do that I never would’ve gone through with it. For as long as I’ve had this deed I could’ve ruined her family ten times over if I’d wanted to ruin them.”
Cruz raised one of his jet black eyebrows, his hawk-like features sharpened by his look of disbelief. “Are you honestly trying to tell me that you weren’t going to use that deed against her family?”
Caleb gritted his teeth and slowly counted to ten. If his oldest and best friend in the world didn’t believe his intentions were semi-honorable, then how was he going to convince Sierra that he hadn’t been planning to destroy her familys’ legacy?
“No. I wasn’t! I swear! My heart was never in it, even though I pretended otherwise.”
Cruz looked closely at his friend and studied him for a moment, gauging the sincerity that shone in his eyes and the truth that rang out in his words. “Calm down. I believe you. You’re not a liar.”
“I need all the believers I can get at the moment,” Caleb said grimly as he recalled the earlier incident at his place with Sierra He couldn’t seem to rid his mind of the image of her sitting on his bedroom floor looking like a wounded bird. He’d never seen her eyes so cold, so detached. He’d never seen her spirit so broken.
“Sam Jarvis! That old rascal.” The tinkle of female laughter reached both mens’ ears and they looked up to see Marissa standing at their table, laughing with obvious delight and shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help hearing you mention his name, Caleb. I hope he’s not pestering Sierra about the oil on the Diamond Lil. I swear, that man is obsessed.”
“What did you say?” Caleb asked with a frown, his every instinct telling him that Marissa’s words were a gift from above.
“What did I say?” Marissa asked nervously as her eyes darted between Caleb and Cruz.
Through The Fire (Guardians, Inc. Book 2) Page 19