by Raeann Blake
Hailey was just trying to breathe. She’d been so sure that Clay didn’t care. Now she was leaving and he had sounded sad. And she had heard glass on glass, telling her that he was pouring a drink at this time of the morning. Damn. Had she been wrong?
Clay stood at the window and stared into nothing as he went back over everything that had happened during that time. When she had come to him a little more than a month after the one night they had spent together and told him. The tests he had insisted she have. The quiet marriage ceremony. Then the call that came, saying she’d been in a wreck. The tears on her face when he’d gotten to the hospital. He could easily remember how deep the hurt had been, how much the loss filled him. Pain that he had quickly covered with anger directed at her. For it happening at all. For the wreck. Everything.
He felt the silent tears trickle down his face. He hadn’t loved her. Had never loved her. He hadn’t even really known her. But he wanted that baby. More than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. And it was suddenly gone. He knew the reason he’d never filed for a divorce was because it would somehow take away the curtain of blame that he had kept aimed at Gail and open up that hurt again. In his head, he knew it was all as much his fault as hers. He hadn’t used any protection. He’d been drunk and careless. And the morning that she had the wreck, she had asked him to take her into town for the doctor’s appointment. She thought that he should be a part of the entire experience. But he hadn’t taken her to town. They had argued about it and he’d ridden off on a horse instead of going with her. If he’d been driving…
He quickly wiped his face when the quiet knock came on the door. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely without turning around as the door opened then closed quietly.
“Son?”
He dropped his head and fought the tears without turning around. “She wants a divorce.”
“Okay. You don’t?” Shack asked.
“You know I do. It’s just that…goddammit, Shack. I wanted that baby,” he whispered.
“I know you did, son. I know you did. This closes the chapter and that’s hard. You’ll go on, Clay. You’ll go through this just like you have everything else. It’s what we do. It what we have to do,” Shack said as he laid a gentle hand on Clay’s shoulder.
“I know,” he said as he cleared his throat and wiped a hand down his face. He downed the last of the whiskey then finally turned to face him.
“She’s gettin’ married. Some guy in California, I think. It’s funny that…it seems like I should feel something about that. But I don’t. Just about…the other,” he said quietly.
“That’s understandable. Anytime a marriage ends badly it’s sad, but you know as well as I do that what you had was never a marriage. It was a union intended to provide a child with a home. It’s right for you to both move on. Long past due, son.”
Clay sighed and nodded. “I know you’re right. It just kind of surprised me, I guess. I figured she was here for money. She doesn’t want money, none of the ranch, nothing. Just a divorce.”
“She’s filing?”
“Yeah. I gave her my lawyer’s name. Told her to send the papers there.”
“That’s good. Now listen to me, Clay. I know your lawyer will tell you this, but you be in court. Everything should go off without a hitch, but Montana has some screwball judges. Don’t let this be the one case where that judge decides he’s gonna award her part of this ranch even though you both settled that you wouldn’t. You need to be in court that day.”
Clay nodded and said, “Yeah. I will. Shack, Yates has been overcharging us for some items. By a lot. For six months.”
“The new girl found that?”
Clay nodded and leaned back against the desk. “Yeah. Hailey. Her name’s Hailey. She thinks he’s trying to put us out of business. She had some kind of run-in with him yesterday when she went in to pay the bill that Pepper didn’t pay but she won’t tell me exactly what he said.”
“That old bastard has had it in for you from the day you took over. You know that. And you know why.”
Clay nodded and sighed. “Yeah. I know. She’s gonna try to get his price down and if he won’t budge, she’ll be buying somewhere else.”
Shack nodded then smiled slightly. “This one sounds pretty sharp, Clay. Let’s not run her off, okay?”
Clay snorted and shoved Shack on the shoulder. “Get the hell out of my office, old man. Go find something to do.”
“You okay?” Shack said as he got to the door then turned back to look at him again.
“Yeah. I will be. Go ahead.”
He opened the door and took one step out then turned back to look at Clay. She wasn’t shouting but her voice was raised loud enough that they could hear her easily.
“No, perhaps you didn’t understand me, sir. I’m telling you that I have absolutely no intention of paying the prices that you’ve been charging for the last six months. Of course, I’m sure that it was a billing oversight on your part and that for our continued patronage you will gladly refund the amount of overcharges. I can provide you with an itemized list to ease the burden on your bookkeeping staff. Is that right? Okay. Then understand this. I do the purchasing for the ranch. I choose where we buy our supplies. I choose not to buy them from you. You won’t be getting an order from this ranch tomorrow. And you can close our credit line. We won’t be using your establishment in the future. You do that,” she said then slammed the phone down on her desk.
Shack nudged Clay on the shoulder when they heard her talking to herself but no longer loud enough for them to hear what she was saying.
“Word to the wise. You’d better get that grin off your face before you go in there. Way I heard it was she had a little set-to with the manager of an electronics store in Bozeman yesterday. Seems he’s still lookin’ for a few pieces of his ass that are missin’. You wanna keep yours intact you better not let her see that grin. See you,” Shack said then chuckled and went out the front door.
Clay waited for several minutes until he was sure he could keep a straight face then crossed slowly to her office. He waited silently in the doorway until she looked up then quietly said, “Need some coffee?”
“No. Thanks. I’m good. We won’t be buying from Yates anymore. I’m sure you’ll be getting a call…” She stopped when the phone on her desk rang. Clay cleared his throat and walked over to it and picked it up.
“Double-C Bar,” he barked.
He waited for just a second and met Hailey’s eyes steadily. “Hold on, Yates. There have been some changes out here. I don’t deal with the suppliers anymore. You want my Business Manager. I understand you’ve met. Hold on,” he said then held the phone out to Hailey with a straight face.
Hailey took the phone and held it up to her ear. “Mr. Yates? Hello? Hello?” She pulled the phone down and looked at it then up to Clay. “I believe he hung on me.”
He couldn’t stand it anymore and finally burst out laughing.
Hailey’s breath caught in her chest and she smiled up at him broadly then had to laugh with him. “Oh, God. I would have paid a lot of money to see the look on his face. Hailey, I believe you’re having a steak à la Cardell for supper tonight.”
“Already? I haven’t got all of this straight yet.”
“Sure you have. You just haven’t gotten everything in the computer. You did in one day what it would have taken me a month to figure out and then I’d be behind a second month. You’ve earned it,” he said as he started out the door but stopped and turned back to look at her.
“Oh…and the answer is yes.”
Hailey frowned and tilted her head as she tried to remember asking him something that he hadn’t answered. “Wait…the answer to what?”
“What you were gonna ask me last night.”
“How do you know what I was going to ask you last night?”
Clay smiled slightly then shrugged his shoulders. “Same way you knew I needed to go ride.”
“You’ve got a great smile and a wonderful laugh,
” she said softly.
His head dropped slightly then he lifted it back up. “Well…don’t get used to it. I’m sure it won’t stay around. Go back to work.”
She smiled as she leaned back in the chair as she tried to puzzle through what had happened. He was sad when Gail left. He took a drink. And the next thing she knew, he was in her office…laughing. Golly, he had a great laugh. And man what that smile does to his face. As sexy as it is with the bad boy look on it, with that smile…killer.
“Uh, uh, uh,” she muttered to herself as she started entering the checks that needed to be printed into the computer.
Once she had those done, she carried them to him then had him go over the ones that should be paid the following week so she could go ahead and get those ready as well. When she carried the second set back to him, she found him at the window staring out.
“Clay?”
“What? Oh. You need signatures,” he said quietly then walked around the desk, sank down in the chair and started signing.
“Is she coming back?” she asked quietly. She saw his pen stop then start again.
“No. She’s not coming back. She came to ask me for a divorce,” he said evenly.
“And…that’s bad?”
“No, it’s not bad. It’s just that…” He trailed off and then laid his pen down after he signed the last check and looked up at her.
“Nobody knows this but Shack, Hailey. This thing with me and Gail…it was never a normal marriage. I got drunk one night. Picked her up in a bar and had sex. I didn’t use any protection. About a month and a half later, she showed up on my doorstep and said she was pregnant. I didn’t believe her. I paid for her to have a DNA test done on the fetus. It was mine. We went to a JP, got married and I brought her here. She took the front bedroom upstairs. Mine was where it is now. I never touched her again. I couldn’t, but…that was my kid.
“It was about a month later. She was going into town for a doctor’s appointment. Her first one. And we had a big argument because she wanted me to go with her and I wouldn’t go. So she went by herself. Not too long after she left, I got a phone call saying that she’d been in an accident. I went to the hospital and…I knew as soon as I saw her. Her eyes were red from crying. Tears still on her face. And as soon as I walked in the door, she burst out crying again. And I knew.
“I blamed her. For all of it. For getting pregnant. For having the wreck. Everything. I knew it was as much my fault as hers. I didn’t use protection. I should have driven her into town. But I couldn’t accept that right then. They kept her in the hospital for a couple of days and then I brought her back here. I remember I helped her go up the stairs. Down to her bedroom. And she sat down on the side of the bed. And the first words out of my mouth were that I wanted a divorce. She’d just lost a baby. My baby. And it was the first thing I could say to her. A month later she was gone. And this is the first time I’ve seen her since.
“I figured she wanted money. It caught me a little off guard when she asked me for a divorce. It’s a good thing. But it reminds me of what could have been. He or she would have been about one and half now,” he said quietly then looked down at the desk after he shifted his eyes from the window back to her and found tears on her face.
“Oh, Clay. I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Long time ago, Hailey. Old wounds that just got kicked open, that’s all. It’s in the past. This is all you have to pay next week?”
Hailey quickly wiped her face and nodded. “Yes. That’s it. Tomorrow morning after I place the orders, I’ll get totals and print out checks for where we’re getting the supplies.”
“Okay. Good. I think I’m gonna go ride for a while. I’ll see you later,” he said as he rose and handed the checks back to her. He stopped when he got to the door and didn’t look back as he spoke softly.
“Hailey, I’m not sure why I told you all that. I’d rather everybody not know about it.”
“They won’t, Clay. Have a good ride.”
She slipped her hand over her mouth to hold back the quiet sobs as she squeezed her eyes shut and waited until she heard the front door before she quietly slipped back across the living room to her office and closed the door behind her. Only then did she let the tears flow freely.
Clay walked slowly across the yard. He had no clue why he had told her. More puzzling was the way everything inside of him had seized into an immovable mass when he had seen the tears in those pretty eyes. He shook his head. Maybe it was just all those old things getting stirred up again, but he felt dangerously close to being somewhere he didn’t need to be.
“Hey, Clay. Goin’ out again?” Laine called as he saw Clay walk by the door.
Clay turned around and went back then walked in and sat down in one of the chairs. “Yeah. I think I’ll ride the south pasture. I haven’t been down that way in a while. Oh…pass the word. We no longer buy from Yates.”
“What?” Laine asked in surprise. “I mean I know she had a run-in with him, but…”
“He’s been overcharging us for six months for several items. Way overcharging. She called him on it, he wouldn’t come down so she cut him off. Told him to close the line of credit. And we’re not opening credit anywhere. We’ll pay for everything from now on.”
“No, shit. Oh, man I wish I could have seen him. I bet his face turned three shades of purple,” Laine said then burst out laughing in surprise when Clay smiled a genuine smile.
“You should have heard him when he called me. Not two minutes after she got off the phone with him. I told him I didn’t deal with suppliers anymore, that he needed to talk to my Business Manager and handed her the phone. He hung up on her,” Clay said then had to laugh himself with Laine, slapped his hand on the desk and roared with laughter.
“Oh, God. I love this girl. Where has she been for the last five years?”
“In New Mexico under the thumb of a man that sounds remarkably like Clayton Cardell. Oh…more news. Gail’s filing for a divorce.”
“No, shit? Clay, that’s good, right?”
“Yeah, it’s good. And I told Hailey she could work Soldier in one of the corrals to see if he really is a cutting horse.”
“Man, you are just full of surprise this morning. I thought sure you were gonna snap my head off yesterday when you saw her walk out with that damn horse.”
“Probably would have if Shack hadn’t held onto me. I was headed that way. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. That horse doesn’t know how close he came to being glue. And one last thing…she’s going with us when we move the herd. But she ain’t riding that horse. She doesn’t know that yet. He hasn’t been proven around the herd. I don’t want her riding him out like that until we see how he does.”
“I’ll let you tell her that.”
“Chicken?”
“Are you?” Laine shot back.
“I’m going riding. Be back later,” Clay said with a grin and rose then when through the door.
Laine sat where he was for several seconds and shook his head in amazement. He hadn’t seen a smile on Clay’s face in years. And he wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he’d ever heard him really laugh before. He shook his head again to clear it and grabbed two bottles of water and followed him out.
Chapter Seven
Clay blew out a long breath when she walked out of the stables leading the big black horse behind her. “Hey. I didn’t know you were back,” she said as she found Clay beside the corral fence with an older man at his side. She walked straight to him and held out her hand.
“I bet you’re Shack. I’m Hailey,” she said with a broad smile. The twinkling blue eyes and smile she got back made her feel good somehow.
Shack shook her hand firmly and then tipped his hat. “My pleasure, Miz Hailey. You sure set this place on its ear yesterday when you rode that black monster. Sure doesn’t like anybody else as much as he does you.”
“Oh, he’s a big sweetheart. Aren’t you guy?”
“Hailey, are you ready?”
Laine asked.
She nodded and said, “I am. I’m gonna back him up over here some before I get on him. Just in case he wants to play a little.”