She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t go back into his arms; she’d lose herself if she did. Lacey knew that as surely as she knew her name. But impossibly, not to face what she felt there seemed as completely wrong for her, too.
No, she didn’t know what to do. So she did the one thing she could think of, that had worked before. The choice that was still open to her.
Lacey turned and walked away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LACEY STORMED OUT OF THE bank and hit the sidewalk on Main Street, angry strides taking her to her father’s pickup. She was aware of passing by without greeting more than one townsperson who bid her good morning, aware that the fact would be all over Abysmal by noon of how she’d been on a royal tear. Speculation as to why would run the gamut from a hangnail to a hundred-year feud; severity would be gauged from a minor hissy fit to a boiling-over pot of bearcat stew.
Well, she didn’t care what they thought! She was through with being manipulated, maneuvered, controlled, steered or otherwise tricked out of having a say as to what happened to her in this town!
Most of all, though, she was angry with herself. She couldn’t believe she’d let down her guard with that man again!
Because it hurt. It hurt a lot, even if she knew that was her problem and not Will Proffitt’s. She should have known better than to confide in him a few nights ago at the town social, to trust him with even a little bit of her heart.
Except in the few moments he’d held her in his arms, she had felt understood and supported by him as she never had by any man, most of all Nicolai.
Her step slowed. Then she remembered, too, how out of control and completely vulnerable she’d felt. And Will had taken advantage of her! Her pace picked up with renewed vigor.
Lacey reached the pickup and yanked open the door, determined to keep up her head of steam all the way out to the Double R, when just down the street at the tack and feed, she spied the cattle baron himself loading bags of something into the bed of his truck.
She couldn’t help but deem it a golden opportunity. She marched toward him, her fury building with every step.
Will looked up and saw her coming, and a smile touched his lips until he got a gander at her militant stride. And her face.
“This is it, Will Proffitt!” Lacey said, stopping a foot in front of him. “You’ve gone too far this time! Way too far!”
Slowly, he pulled his leather gloves off, looking for all the world as if he were getting ready to head inside for a leisurely glass of iced tea. “You mind tellin’ me what you’re talking about?”
“I wasn’t quite sure getting back at Matt or proving something to the town had been the entire story the other night, and today my hunch proved out.” She stepped toe to toe with him. “You’re deliberately making it look like we’re involved, first at the dance and now by making things happen for me down at city hall and the bank!”
She pointed a finger at his chest. “I don’t know what game this is you’re playing and I don’t care! I just want to know what it’s going to take to stop the almighty Texas Cattle King from manipulating other people—and me!—once and for all. Because the last thing I want is for people to think you and I are a couple!”
He moved her finger to one side as if it were the barrel of a gun. “A couple of what?”
“Don’t be obtuse! You know what I mean. Like it’s hands off of me for any other man in town!”
“I thought that was what you wanted,” Will said mildly. “No bothersome frogs hoppin’ around your feet and tryin’ their hardest to kiss the princess.”
“That,” Lacey said through clenched teeth, “was low.”
They locked eyes in a tussle of wills that clocked in at a good thirty seconds, during which Lacey saw not one bit of the man who’d listened to her with such empathy, who’d provided her with such comfort by simple virtue of hearing out her concerns.
The disappointment was crushing.
She was shocked when tears filled her eyes, profoundly aware she had let her emotions get the better of her—again!—and with the worst person she could do so. But how was she to be any different? How was she to say what she needed to say, be who she needed to be, even feel what she needed to feel—wanted to feel in order to be alive—without letting down her guard and making herself so...so vulnerable?
She whirled away from Will, hoping with all her heart he hadn’t seen the glistening in her eyes, but he caught her arm, spinning her back around.
“Lacey, wait—”
“Let me go!” She tried to pull away but it was futile. He took her other arm and drew her close enough they were practically nose to nose.
“No, I won’t let you go,” he said in a low, angry voice. “You got somethin’ to say to me, I want to hear it, all right? And if you’ve got a problem with me, fine, I want to know what it is. I can handle that, too.”
Stunned for the second time in less than a minute, she stared up at him. “Really?”
“Really.” He shook his head imperceptibly. “But not here.”
She didn’t need eyes in the back of her head to know the doorway to every store and shop up and down the street had a head stuck out of it like prairie dogs peeking out of their holes.
“Where, then?” she asked.
“Let’s step inside to Lee’s office. He’s gone to Amarillo to do some buying for the store.”
She nodded, and in the next few seconds he’d guided her into the tack and feed, past an openmouthed Jimmy Ray, to the back of the building.
Lee’s office was modest but tidy, and it even had a worn leather sofa up against one wall. Will took Lacey there and sat her down. He remained standing himself, slapping his gloves against his thigh as he gazed down at her, gray eyes brooding.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll own up to the fact that yes, I was trying to give people the impression we were an item.”
“But why, Will?”
He cut her one of his self-reproaching glances. “Let’s just say it seemed preferable to people thinking you and Lee were one.”
That brought her up off the couch. “I swear, Will Proffitt, when are you going to let go of that? I am not interested in Lee!”
He marked her stance and tone, and nodded briefly. “I’m glad to hear it,” he drawled. “As for engineerin’ a situation to get your stuff approved with Matt and Dale, I didn’t talk either of ’em into anything they shouldn’t have done in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean after our conversation the other evening, I looked into the matter, and the situation was almost exactly what you’d said. Although on Dale’s part, I give him credit for good intentions. He was only thinkin’ to protect you—”
“But I don’t want anyone’s protection!” she interrupted. “I am not a princess waiting for Prince Charming, and you know it!”
She felt herself getting all choked up again, but she wasn’t going to turn away this time. “I thought you understood that about me, Will,” she said, her gaze imploring.
He reached out as if to touch her, then seemed to think better of the gesture and dropped his hand to his side. “And I believe I do. But you know convincin’ everyone else in town isn’t so easy as changing the name on your mailbox and puttin’ on your old blue jeans. We’ve already had this discussion, Lacey.”
“Then what is it going to take for everyone to just let me be me?”
Will ran his fingers back through his hair. “Well, I ha
d thought going to Dale and Matt and taking ’em to task was going to help. I’ve got to say in Dale’s defense that if he acted protective, it was because the picture of you he has in his mind is not as a countess but as this bitty tow-haired girl who used to come in with her daddy to pay the water bill when he was town clerk. I mean, he hasn’t had much chance to know you as an adult woman who’s got her own ideas and opinions. After all, you left town when you were nineteen. People haven’t gotten the opportunity to get acquainted with you personally—and for all your talk of wantin’ to be one of the gang, you haven’t let ’em.”
Lacey sank her teeth into her lower lip in thought. It made sense. She hadn’t had much direct contact with Dale after she’d outgrown tagging along with her father. In fact, no one, really, had seen her develop into herself, from an unseasoned girl to a grown woman.
As for not letting anyone in town get to know her now, yes, she had to admit she’d been keeping people at a distance. It had simply been a gut reaction, especially since she was getting into some pretty deep emotional territory with her reasons for starting her center—reasons, at this point, which no one knew.
“I guess I can understand Dale’s reaction,” she admitted. She shot Will a questioning glance. “But what about Matt?”
Will shifted on his feet, looking abruptly uncomfortable. “Yeah, Matt...well, Matt was thinkin’ he was some kind of Wall Street shark in training or somethin’, which I’ll own is partially my fault. So it seemed to me it was my responsibility to personally set him straight and make it right for you.”
Lacey frowned. “You’re responsible for Matt’s behavior? How?”
“A month or so ago I asked Matt to sit on another loan,” Will answered, and she saw the tips of his ears turn red. “I’ve since made that matter right, but I knew at the time he’d gotten it into his head this was the way things were handled once you got of a certain standing in town.”
His gaze was direct. “But things aren’t handled that way, Lacey. At least not by me. I may not always conduct my business in the manner people’d like, but I’m not just looking out for my own interests and concerns, and who cares about the consequences to others. Just like you’re set on not being seen as a princess, I am not some all-powerful cattle baron with a dozen puppets on strings that I yank on just for the pleasure of seeing ’em jump. And you’d know that about me, if you’ll just take the time to think on it.”
Lacey paused to think back to how he’d treated her that day by the barn on the Double R—with concern for her health and respect for her pride. How he’d behaved the day they’d built the chute out in the pasture—with interest in her perspective and sensitivity toward her beliefs. And how he’d responded to her frustration just now, with forbearance and consideration—even when under attack from her.
At the realization, Lacey sank back down on the couch. She looked at Will ruefully. “You’re right. I owe you an apology, Will. All I can say in explanation is that I must be reacting to having lived for eight years with someone whose every thought and action was to manipulate me and keep me under his thumb.”
“You mentioned that once before,” Will said in a quiet voice. He left off the idle movement with his gloves. “About being vulnerable and having it used against you as a weakness.”
No, she wasn’t sure she wanted to open this emotional can of worms, especially with this man, but it struck Lacey that the matter was festering in her, affecting what she did and thought. And she remembered how she had vowed she would not let that happen to her. Couldn’t let it happen to her. She’d die inside.
She drew in a deep breath, for courage.
“Yes, when it comes to exploiting someone’s weaknesses, Nicolai is...the best.” Lacey concentrated on her laced fingers as they rested on her knees. “Or maybe I should say he was the best. The best at manipulating me so I barely knew I was being maneuvered. Everything he did or said was calculated out to the nth power. Trying to argue a point with him was a lost cause. He had a way of picking apart my reasoning, coming at me again and again, questioning every point, until I became lost in the logic and had to admit defeat.”
“Is that how you ended up back here?” Will asked, his voice as hushed as hers.
“No. I stayed—that was my surrender. I gave in, gave up, thinking that was how marriage was. How it had to be. H-how the rest of my life would be.” She clamped her lip between her teeth, a bid for precious control.
After a moment, she found a measure of it, and went on. “I’m ashamed to admit I stayed in that existence for a long time. I abdicated my wants, my needs, my opinions to Nicolai’s, I wanted so much for my marriage to work. But some sense of what was right for me survived inside me, and eventually I sort of developed a different way of dealing with him, one that preserved as much of myself as I could. So instead of trying to fight a battle I couldn’t win, or giving in completely, I withdrew emotionally, protecting myself. Still...compliant, but not conquered.”
Lacey made herself raise her eyes to Will’s. “That’s when the battle started in earnest.”
He went very, very still. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. Nicolai never raised a hand, not even his voice, to me. Not once.”
She saw him digest her statement, his expression a meditation in reflection, and Lacey wondered if her worst fear had just come true, where she revealed the emotional abuse she’d endured—and not have had it understood how devastating it had been to her.
If he didn’t, she didn’t think she would be able to stand it. The vise around her throat was almost to a strangling point, making her feel she had to fight for every breath.
Then Will said, “It sounds like a living hell.”
The choke hold eased, just enough, for Lacey to swallow the sudden lump that rose to her throat. “It was,” she said, “although I’m not sure most people would see it that way. I mean, there are women who deal with far worse situations than I ever did every day, women who truly are fighting for their lives. And I...I was living out a fairy tale every girl dreamed of living with my very own handsome prince. In people’s eyes, I’d have had to have been crazy not to be happy. B-but I couldn’t be, no matter what people said, no matter what he told me—”
Lacey stopped, dropping her chin again, as the memories temporarily overwhelmed her, filling her chest to bursting.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Will sit on the sofa a few feet away from her. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, not looking directly at her, either.
“What happened to make you see you couldn’t stay, Lacey?” he prompted gently.
She held up one hand, needing time, so that she could make herself breathe deeply, reorient herself. She was no longer in Nicolai’s grip. She was here: home, in Abysmal. And Will was by her side.
“Nicolai saw he was losing his influence over me,” she said after a moment. “I’d learned to never let my guard down, never relax, never let my emotions show. Never show weakness. So he tried to get control over me through other means—through other people. That’s what that big mansion for my parents was about. He knew I’d put up with a lot to make them happy. But that tactic only worked on me for a while. Finally I knew that no matter what would happen to me or my parents, I couldn’t stay. I had to leave Nicolai Laslo if I was going to survive. And that’s how I ended up back here.”
She didn’t have the nerve to look at Will but kept her chin tucked and her gaze fastened on her clasped hands. Then his large one covered
them, warm and reassuring.
“So that’s why it’s so important to you to start this center for girls, isn’t it?” he said softly.
His understanding was like a salve on her soul. “Yes. But no one knows that. No one but you.”
Silence pervaded the next few minutes as, eyes squeezed shut, Lacey struggled to master her emotions. Will grasped her fingers in his, linked and laced them together in silent support, which instead of calming her made her even more upset.
A tear escaped her lids and fell, then another and another.
And suddenly she was in his arms, his broad, hard chest beneath her cheek as Lacey cried as she never had in her life.
But she supposed that was how it went when one was healing a heart, so when you at last found an understanding ear to listen to what you had endured and validate your experience, only then could you get to the bottom of your fears, start to feel the feelings you needed to that would help you to mend—and go on.
“I’m sorry, Will,” she said, sniffling and making a weak attempt to push out of his embrace and pull herself together which he rejected with the steeling of his arms around her.
“No, I’m sorry, Lacey,” Will murmured into her hair. “Sorry for what you went through. That wasn’t right, what he did.”
He lifted her chin so she had to look at him. Through a blur of tears, she saw his smoky gaze travel over her features with an expression of contrition. “And I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to remind you of him. I hate to think I have, even though I know I can be a control freak who has a difficult time letting go of bein’ Iron Will Proffitt long enough to recognize what people need instead of me thinkin’ I know what’s best for them.”
“A control freak?” Lacey was surprised into asking.
He slanted her a droll glance. “Lee’s assessment of me, not mine.”
A bubble of laughter rose in her, surprising her even more. “Oh, I don’t know about that. You’ve been pretty responsive and considerate of my needs,” she admitted shyly.
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