by Jillian Hart
Well, then, she was a mistake, too. And that hurt enough to level her. Her heart was broken into sharp and jagged pieces, and broke even more. He’d done that to her. Knowing she loved him, he’d given her a taste of paradise—of what their marriage could be—and then yanked it away from her as if he were in charge.
Well, he wasn’t. She had some say, too. She shook with fury. The road ahead of her was a brown strip between fields of green. Good thing the road was easy to make out because her vision was blurry. Her eyes burned. Tears pooled there, collecting but not falling.
Mariah pulled the surrey to a halt in Rayna’s neighbor’s driveway. Before she could set the brake proper, the bang! of a screen door slamming open resounded in the pleasant afternoon air. Feet pounded on the hard-packed earth.
“Mariah!” Georgie came running, arms outstretched. “You came!”
“I’ll always come for you, princess.” Mariah knelt, holding out her arms as Georgie rammed into her. Reed-thin arms cinched around Mariah’s neck and held on tight.
So tight. “We gotta make mud pies.”
“Is that why you have mud all over you?”
“Yep. We had fun, but we have to wait for the pies to bake.”
“Can you leave them? I bet Molly will make sure the pies bake up properly.” Mariah smiled at the thirteen-year-old girl who was ambling down the dirt pathway. She slipped the gold eagle into the girl’s palm, thanked her for taking such great care of Georgie, and lifted her stepdaughter into the surrey.
“Do you know how to make mud pies?” Georgie asked, once they were under way. “I could show you.”
“I’d like that. I bet you’re pretty good at it.”
“Yep.” Georgie started chattering on about her stay with Molly and how she and Rayna’s son had climbed trees and pretended to be birds and played in the mud by the well.
Mariah listened, as always, filling up with more love for this child, so dear and precious. Then it hit her like a rock to the forehead, and she nearly tumbled from the seat.
She’d never have Nick’s baby. There would be no more children, with him sleeping down the hall from her in his separate bed. There would be no baby to hold. No baby of her own.
“…an’ then I tole Molly…” Georgie scooted over on the seat, right up against Mariah’s side.
Mariah slipped her arm around the little girl, tugging her close and keeping her there. How she loved Georgie. How she loved Joey. They were wonderful children.
But there would be no more. The rage in her chest broke apart, because she couldn’t stay angry with Nick forever. He’d tried to love her. Maybe he’d given it everything he had. He’d tried hard and still, when the lovemaking was over, he’d gazed upon her face and couldn’t feel love.
He couldn’t love her because she was unlovable. What man is gonna want you, Mariah? Pa’s hard words mocked her. He was right, and she hated it, and she hated Nicholas Adam Gray for proving it to her. She hated him with a passion for choosing her out of all the women to marry. He chose her, and, instead of living alone insulated in her lonely life where being a spinster was her choice, he had to go and make her a wife and a stepmother and show her what she couldn’t have. What she wasn’t good enough for. He had to take her to his bed and love her as if she were priceless, the piece of his soul lost and now found, and his one true love for all eternity. When she wasn’t.
He made her feel this way, damn him. It was all his fault—
It wasn’t his fault at all. The horses turned onto the long driveway toward home, as if sensing she was too preoccupied to drive. At the first rise of the prairie, the ranch house came into view, a neat, tidy, two-story house with friendly dormers marching across the roof and a wide front porch inviting visitors to come on up and stay a spell. An ideal home. She’d thought she’d find an ideal life in it, in time. She’d been arrogant to think that one day Nick might fall in love with her.
The truth was, no one could. Her father was right. Every cruel word he’d said to her bit like the edge of a razor into her soul. No, it would have been better—safer—to have stayed a spinster. To never have known this pain.
She was unlovable. She was only good for hard work.
“Mariah.” Georgie held out her arms expectantly.
Mariah blinked. Somehow they were home. The horses had stopped and were waiting politely, their tails twitching in the heat. The brisk wind ruffled their coats.
“Let’s get you inside. It’s past your nap time, young lady.” Mariah’s feet touched the ground.
Georgie was already climbing into her arms. Mariah accepted the sweet weight, settled Georgie on her hip and carried her toward the back steps. The maple leaves rustled hard, as if in protest, at her approach. The sun faded in intensity. When she looked up, she saw a thin web of clouds over the sun and the giant white cliffs of thunderheads building along the horizon.
There would be another storm. Would Nick use that as an excuse to stay out of the house? He probably was saying his thanks right now to those thunderheads, because they were his allies. He’d spend his night watching them, not lying in bed worrying if she was going to come open his door and impose herself on him.
Shame ached in her, in those broken places of her heart. Nick had been pretty dang kind, considering. Turning away from her, instead of using cruel words, as her father had.
Fine, she understood it now.
After lying Georgie down on her bed and tucking her rag doll beneath the blanket, too, Mariah hesitated in the hallway where the window gazed down over the fields. A rise of smoke pinpointed his location—he was bent over, wrestling a calf to the ground while Jeb lifted an iron brand from the hot flames of the fire.
She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look a second longer. Love beat in her heart and stirred in her soul. Love for this man she hated, this man who couldn’t love her even when he’d tried. True, unbreakable love that she wanted to turn off like the kitchen pump and couldn’t.
She wiped at the tears in her eyes. Marrying Nick had been a hard lesson. She didn’t need to make it worse by wasting time on foolish wishes. What she had was a convenient marriage to a man who didn’t love her. Just as Nick had told her from the moment he’d proposed.
She had no one to blame but herself.
“Joey?” She rapped her knuckles on his door. His room was empty. He was without a doubt outside helping his father and uncles brand the cattle. So she tugged the book from her skirt pocket—the latest by Mark Twain—and set it on the foot of his bed, where he was sure to find it.
That’s when she saw it, when she was coming out of Joey’s room. Nick’s door was open, directly across the hall, giving her a plain view of his room. His empty room.
He’d taken out every stick of furniture. Every bit of clothing. Emptiness echoed around her the moment she stepped into the room.
He’d moved out.
Nick had found a way to tell her that he wanted nothing to do with her. This was no longer a convenient marriage.
She was just the housekeeper.
Chapter Fifteen
“Hey, big brother.” Will skidded his horse to a fast stop, swinging down with the grace of a born rider, looking about as mean as a thunderstorm. “You’d best get up to the house. There’s trouble.”
“Trouble?” Whatever it was, he didn’t want to deal with it. He was tired and hot and dirty. Grit stuck to his face as he wrestled the calf to the ground, poked his knee in the animal’s ribs. He used his body weight and every bit of his muscle power to keep the thrashing animal still.
Pop came in with the red-hot iron. Nick prepared for the animal’s reaction to pain, holding the powerful steer steady as the brand hissed and burned.
“Okay.” Pop stepped back, swinging the iron safely away.
Nick released the animal, bounding out of the way of striking hooves and sharp horns. The steer sprang onto his feet and shot out into the field, bawling. Were they done yet? Nick took one look over his shoulder and started cursing. H
e’d been doing this since sunrise and the pen was still half full. His battered body was protesting up a storm.
“Mariah can handle it,” he told Will. Whatever it was—fire, flood or a collapse of the roof. He’d married the most capable woman in three counties.
“The problem is Mariah.”
“Now don’t go lecturing me on how I shouldn’t have married her. I’m gettin’ tired of—”
“She’s packing up her wagon,” Will interrupted.
“Does she need help?” She probably had something to do in town, something to do with one of those clubs she belonged to. “Why don’t you carry anything she needs carried? I’m busy here.”
“Nick, Mariah’s leaving you.”
The lasso slipped from his hands, hissing to the ground, coiling like a snake in the grass in front of him. “She’s not leaving me. Mariah wouldn’t leave.”
“Then I don’t know what you’d call putting her things in her trunks and dragging them through the house and into the yard, but right now she’s trying to get those trunks into her old wagon. She even hitched up her ox.”
“No.” He didn’t believe it. “You go down and help her with what she’s really doing. Maybe she’s giving her trunks away. She won’t be needing them.”
Because she was staying right here with him. End of story. Forever. Until death parted them. That was their bargain. For better or worse, a convenient marriage.
“Go look for yourself.” Will swung into the saddle.
Mariah wasn’t the kind of woman to leave. Nick refused to believe it. His feet started moving, despite his belief in her, taking him to his mare. He rode over the rise and down the draw and up to the knoll where an ox stood in the shade of the maple, hitched to Mariah’s old wagon. Mariah wiped sweat from her brow with her sleeve, then bent over and began shoving one of her trunks onto its side.
One trunk was already in the wagon bed.
His blood iced. “Hey, you takin’ those into town?”
“Yes.” She didn’t sound happy. She didn’t look happy. She hefted the trunk, got it off the ground, but it was too awkward. She dropped it, cursing.
“Here, let me help.” Those were empty, he knew it. Until the moment he knelt and heaved the trunk off the dirt and realized it was packed full.
She was leaving? Mariah? The one woman he’d thought would stand by him no matter what? That couldn’t be right….
Fury blinded him. Like a lightning strike, it seared from the top of his head to the bottom of his soles, making his purpose clear. He balanced the trunk on his shoulder. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. They had a bargain, sealed by vows and a wedding ring. She wasn’t getting out of this. He was stuck, and so was she.
“Hey! Where are you going?” Her gait pounded behind him all the way to the house, angry, too. “I want that in the wagon, not in the house.”
“Too bad, because you aren’t going anywhere, lady.”
“Oh, and who are you to tell me what to do?”
“I’m your husband.”
“No, you’re not. You’re not living in this house anymore.” She leaped up the steps, circling him to block the back door. “I saw your room.”
“I figured things would be better between us if I moved into the barn.” He hated this. She might look as mad as hell, but tears stood in her eyes, unshed and genuine. He knew it had to hurt. He was responsible for that. “Look, I can’t be what you want. You keep looking at me with those moon eyes of yours, so bright and shining and hopeful, and that’s not what we have here, Mariah. We had a deal, and we blew it.”
Every time I look at you, he wanted to say, I remember being in your arms. More vulnerable and more exposed than he’d ever been. Every time he looked at her, he wanted her with a fiery yearning that started in the bottom of his soul and pulled upward through every part of him.
And look how right he’d been to hold back. Mariah already wanted to leave. She was packed. She was out the door. She stood in the threshold, blocking his way.
“Nick, I don’t understand.” Her touch was like melted gold, precious and rare and so lustrous, he was spellbound. “You don’t want me. You made that clear. Not as your lover, because you keep pushing me away. Not as your wife, because you don’t need me. Not even as your friend. I don’t know why you married me, but I…”
She had no idea? He didn’t understand it, and it terrified him. He wanted her so much. If only she could see who he really was. Tarnished by life, just as anyone was, with a list of flaws a mile long. He’d let her down, disappoint her, and how would she feel about him then?
Her love would die, that’s what. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t care what his father said. No woman’s heart could be that strong. He didn’t believe it. Not even of Mariah.
“I love you, Nick.” Her words trembled, raw and thin. One tear slid down her cheek, just one. “I regret marrying you because all you wanted was a woman to do the work around here. You know how I was raised, darn you, and you did this to me? I can’t stay here in this house full of a family that isn’t mine.”
“You’re going to leave, no matter what I do, aren’t you?” His eyes darkened until they were nothing but shadow. “Even if I haul every trunk back into the house and guard the door with a shotgun, you’ll find a way to leave.”
“I’ll keep my promise to you. I will cook and clean. I’ll watch your children. But after I tuck them in at night, I’m going to my own house. Betsy will let me have my old room back, and we’ll live there together. I’ll be all right. I’ll survive.”
Barely, but she didn’t want Nick to know that. “I’ll be the housekeeper you need, I’ll raise your children and I’ll care for them as my own. But I can’t pretend to be your wife. I can’t live a lie. I won’t. I won’t sit at the breakfast table every morning and hurt like this. I can’t. It’s already killing me. Will you let me go?”
“Yes.” The hardest words he’d ever said, but Nick managed. He turned around, carried her trunk to the wagon and heaved it into the bed. “Guess you’ve got this all figured out.”
“I do.” She didn’t look happy. She was white as a ghost and moved like one, too, as if the life had drained out of her.
It drained out of him, too. He could feel her pain, in his own. She could move out of his house and drive down that road, but she was still a part of him. Why that was, he couldn’t say. He didn’t understand it. He only knew that he’d been right to withhold his heart. Look at her, leaving him. Just as he knew she would.
“Would you mind lifting the other trunks for me?” she asked in a thin, raw voice trembling with emotion. With hurt.
He wanted to haul her into his arms, drag her to the ground and love her with every bit of his soul. He wanted to be a part of her, joined with her. Every broken place in his heart yearned for it with an unbearable pain.
“Sure. I’ll get the trunks for you.”
“Thank you.”
That’s all she had to say? Thank you? Now would be the perfect time to start in with the demands. The list she’d already made up while she’d packed of how she wanted life to be, and how he was supposed to act and the things he was supposed to do to keep her from leaving.
He was braced for it, his heart protected, his feelings buried deep. She could do her worst, and he wouldn’t let her hurt him. Give him any tongue lashing she wanted. Any berating. Any torrent of anger. He could take it, because wasn’t that the way a marriage went?
Mariah stepped close, bringing his heart with her. Her hand lighted on his shoulder and the touch to his skin reached all the way down to his soul. One touch. That’s all it took, and he was laid bare to her, open and exposed, the most vulnerable parts of him.
“I don’t know what this is between us,” she said quietly, simply, “but it’s the reason I can’t pretend. I love you, Nick. With my entire being. I think you feel that way, too.”
She laid her hand over his heart and, like a boom of thunder, her touch rolled through him.
&nbs
p; I love you, he wanted to say. The words were right there, but he couldn’t say them. What game was Mariah playing?
“I’ll be back to serve supper.” She brushed a kiss to his cheek.
So incredibly tender. She wasn’t playing games. She wasn’t trying to hurt him. She wasn’t that kind of person.
“Take good care, all right? I’ve asked Will to find someone to keep an eye on Georgie while I’m gone.”
“Pop will do it. Be careful to keep an eye on the storm. Those thunderheads are building fast. With this heat, it could be twister weather.”
“I know.” She climbed into the wagon and gathered the reins.
For one brief moment their gazes met and locked. Love burned through the broken pieces of his heart. Love that could heal him. Make him whole. Make him surrender.
He took a step toward her, unsure. No, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t trust her that much. He didn’t think he could trust any woman, so he let her go.
Although the house was in the distance and out of her sight, Mariah could still feel Nick in her heart. In that little piece only he possessed.
And always would.
The wind battered her sunbonnet brim and swept the tears pooling in her eyes onto her cheeks. She wiped at the wetness, hating this weakness. She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry.
If Nick couldn’t love her, no one could.
She had to accept that. Had to find a way to go on, to walk into Nick’s house every morning and make breakfast, to take care of his children, to clean his house and do his laundry, and all the thousand things needing tended to in a day. She had to do all those things and keep her heart from shattering into even smaller pieces.
She was of half a mind to request a divorce. Shocking, she knew, but that would be the solution to the overwhelming anguish. She could go back to being Mariah Scott, the fearsome and sharp-tongued spinster who didn’t need anyone. Ever.