“Don’t start, you two.”
She didn’t know why she couldn’t imagine living here, even with her twin as her housemate—but she just couldn’t. “We’ll find the place. Eventually.” Although nothing she had seen thus far had even come close to the home she was still living in—albeit in a slightly estranged way—with Cullen.
Jeanne assessed Bridgett’s inner tumult with a glance. “How about I let the two of you talk before we see any other properties on the list? I have a few calls to make, anyway.” She strode off, her high heels clicking on the pavers.
The back gate snapped shut.
Bess sat down on one of the wicker chairs on the patio. The leashed Riot dropped down beside her. “Why don’t you just admit what’s going on with you?”
Too restless to sit down, Bridgett kept rolling the contentedly sleeping Robby back and forth. “And what would that be?”
“You regret turning down Cullen’s marriage proposal.”
Regret didn’t begin to cover it. Not a second went by without her wishing she could have followed her heart and said yes. Instead of listening to her head.
Miserably, she countered, “He doesn’t love me, Bess. Not in the all-encompassing way you need to love someone you marry and intend to spend a lifetime with.”
“Could have fooled me. And everyone else who has seen the two of you together.’”
“Me, too, for a while, anyway.” Until there at the end he’d shown what he was really thinking and feeling. Or not feeling.
“Cullen is a man of his word, Bess. When this whole thing started, we made a deal. I would do everything I could to help him preserve his good name and not bring shame on the McCabe family.”
“By letting him help you with Robby and Riot, even though they weren’t his.”
“Right. And, in turn, he promised to do everything within his power to help me get approved to foster-adopt Robby and Riot. Suggesting we marry was just a way to expedite that process and ensure the outcome.”
Bess scoffed. “It had nothing to do with how much he has come to care for you and Robby and Riot?”
“We’re friends.”
Bess lifted a brow.
“And lovers.”
Another pause.
“And we have successfully coparented.”
Bess petted Riot. “So, what else do you need to be happy?”
Bridgett sighed. “In the long run? A lot more.”
“You don’t think it’s destiny?”
That was the hell of it; the emotional side of her still did. The intellectual side of her did not.
Bridgett drew a deep breath. “The crisis brought us together, Bess. Not knowing what was going to happen with Robby and Riot, or where they came from. Struggling to care for them together intensified all that.” Gave us a false sense of intimacy that I sentimentally interpreted as way more than that. “And now...” She swallowed, unable to continue.
“Now what?” Bess pressed.
Bridgett stiffened her spine. “He was very clear when this whole situation arose that the only reason he was participating was out of honor and responsibility.” He hadn’t seen the situation as their destiny. Or been looking to get married. Or have kids—the way she had for some time now.
“So?” Bess squinted over at her. “That’s admirable in a way that only adds to his allure. Not every guy I know would have stepped up the way he did.”
Anguished tears stung Bridgett’s eyes. “Don’t you think I know that?” He’d kindly offered them his home and his help, and to a certain extent, anyway, his heart...
“Then what’s the problem?” her sister persisted.
Knotting her hands together, Bridgett struggled to explain, “Cullen is a McCabe. He still wants to do the right thing. And the right thing in his mind, the easy thing that would make everyone happy—at least in the short term—is for him to marry me. And for us to live together like a real family.”
Bess arched a brow in Bridgett’s direction. “Like the real family you’ve been the last few weeks?”
It had been a fairy tale. But fairy tales did not last. Any more than relationships forged in crises did. She couldn’t bear to see their happiness deteriorate bit by bit as cold reality returned. “I can’t take advantage of his generosity.” And that’s what she would be doing. So she had to be as noble now, as he had been.
“I see.” Bess regarded her gravely. “So you’ll break his heart, instead.”
Bridgett flushed.
Silence fell.
Bess stood to square off with her. “Have you told him how you feel?”
“Yes.”
Bess grasped her forearms. “I mean really, sis. Deep down.”
Bridgett jerked her arms free. Unable to bear the scrutiny, she walked away. “I told you. I don’t want to back him into a corner.” The way her ex had once tried to pressure her into doing something she wasn’t convinced she wanted, never mind was actually ready for...
“So what’s the alternative?” Bess threw up her hands in frustration. “Live a lie?”
Stubbornly, Bridgett tried to hold on to what she could. “It’s not like Cullen and I are giving up everything,” she argued.
“Isn’t it?”
Bridgett moved the stroller closer, spoke softly so as not to disturb the sleeping infant. “We’re on the verge of being friends now. Coparents, if the court and Department of Children and Family Services agree.” Or, at least, they were trying to accomplish all that. Since their falling out, their interactions were excruciatingly polite. Stilted. And while she hoped the awkwardness would ease, over time, she could not guarantee it.
Bess looked as disappointed as Bridgett felt. “Are you telling me you’d be happy with that?”
“No, but...” Bridgett shrugged and dug in all the harder. “I was prepared to be happy with a whole lot less when I signed up to foster-adopt as a single mom.”
Her twin looked at her long and hard. “Maybe,” Bess said softly, “that’s always been the problem.”
* * *
“A LITTLE LONELY around here?”
Cullen turned to see his stepmother, Rachel, striding toward him. He turned away from the fence post he had been repairing. “Always is when I auction off a big part of my herd.” That would change in a few weeks, when the new crop of Hotlander calves were born. Then life would be busy again. Almost as busy as it had been when he and Bridgett and the baby and Riot were a team.
Though not as happy...
Not anywhere near as happy...
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Rachel strode closer, scolding. “And you know it, Cullen McCabe!”
Obviously, she’d heard that Bridgett was off looking at houses again. Not that he hoped she would find anything. Because until she did, she and the baby and the puppy would be staying right there on the ranch with him. And though they weren’t exactly getting along famously—at least, not in the intimate way they once had—it was still good to have them nearby. Comforting, almost. If you could overlook their almost unbearably fake cordiality, anyway.
“You forgot the Reid.” He pointed out the omission of his middle name in an effort to change the subject.
“Yes, I did!” Rachel shot back fiercely, surprising him. “Although I wouldn’t have—if I thought you were as proud of being a Reid as you are of being a McCabe.” She strode even closer, her boots digging into the manicured grass. The empathy he’d come to expect from her lit her eyes. “It made sense when you first came to live with us. You’d always been a Reid and then, suddenly, with the truth about your paternity discovered, you were a McCabe, too.”
That had been a rocky time.
Rachel studied him with a lawyer’s assessing gaze. “But now the use of both surnames just seems to drag you down. Make you feel fifty percent McCabe, fifty percent Reid, instead of one
hundred percent McCabe and one hundred percent Reid.”
Hadn’t she just hit the nail on the head, he ruminated sagely. Cullen shrugged, embarrassed to find his mother’s selfishness and his illegitimacy could still embarrass him. “I think it’s understandable why I don’t quite fit in anywhere,” he muttered. At least, he hadn’t. Until Bridgett and Robby and Riot came along and made a home with him. Then, for a short while, at the Western Cross, he had.
He went back to stringing barbed wire. “Not the way the rest of my half siblings do.”
Rachel stood next to the section he was repairing. She folded her arms in front of her. “Do you think your feelings about yourself would have been different if Frank had known you as his son from the beginning? That your life would have been better, somehow?”
An honest question deserved an honest answer. “For me? Probably. I don’t know how it would have been for you and him, given the fact that the two of you were newlyweds and my mom not really the sharing type.”
Rachel nodded in understanding. “In any case, we can’t change what was.”
“I know that.”
Her expression softening, she reached out to touch his arm. “Then why do you keep punishing yourself?”
He ignored the brief, familial touch. “I’m not.”
“You let Bridgett and Robby and Riot go without a fight,” she pointed out gently, stepping back.
They hadn’t actually left yet. But they would, as soon as Bridgett found a place, and then life as they knew it really would be over. Cullen met his stepmother’s steady glance, squared his shoulders. “It was what Bridgett wanted.”
Rachel seemed skeptical. “Sure about that?”
Unfortunately, he was. “I suggested we get married,” Cullen stated tersely. “And instead of saying yes, as I had hoped, she said there was no reason to rush into anything.”
“She could have a point, given how fast everything has happened.”
If it were only that, Cullen would have agreed. Figuring he had done enough for one day, he began packing up his tools. “She also wants to continue on with a solo adoption rather than refile completely so I can join her.”
Rachel’s brows lifted at his terse tone. “She’s opposed to you becoming Robby’s legal father?”
He strode back over to his pickup. “No. She just wants it to happen separately from her petition to foster-adopt.”
Rachel followed. “Because she doesn’t trust you to be around?”
Because she wants some big wildly romantic love that he had failed to give her.
And if she couldn’t have that, she would prefer to go on romantically unattached. As a single mother. As friends. And nothing more.
“Something like that,” he fibbed.
Rachel watched him pull off his work gloves. “Is that the way you feel? Like you want to move on? Maybe take that tremendous opportunity in Nebraska?”
Even though it felt like he was being pushed away with both hands, leaving was the last thing on his mind. And that was weird, Cullen acknowledged silently. Usually, in a situation like this, he would have already been packed and on his way to his next ranch to flip. Or, in this case, to the Cartwright Ranch in Nebraska to take advantage of what was still a very big opportunity.
Something about the way his stepmom was looking at him, however, tempted him to respond more candidly than usual.
He dropped the toolbox into the bed of his truck. Tossed the excess barbed wire in after that. “The truth?”
Rachel flashed an encouraging grin. “Nothing but.”
Taking her up on her offer of a shoulder to lean on, he confessed, “The whole thing has left me feeling blindsided.”
She nodded, to her credit, not at all surprised. “Completely understandable.”
He exhaled wearily. “And I’m lonely as hell.” He bit down on a curse as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Had he actually said that aloud? He guessed he had.
Rachel rocked back on the heels of her cowgirl boots, looking more ranch wife, now, than attorney. “I figured as much.” She stopped to search his face. “But that’s the way you’ve always been, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. This woman who had breezed into his life without a prayer of taking his deceased mother’s place knew his heart like nobody else. Always had, always would. Rachel edged closer. To his shock, tears suddenly blurred her eyes. “I blame myself for that, you know,” she said thickly.
He stared. “Why?” He reached inside his truck and retrieved a box of tissues, handed them over. “You welcomed me with open arms when not many women in your place would have.”
Rachel took several and blotted her eyes. “I also did you a terrible disservice.” She shook her head in obvious regret. “When you first came to us, with that impenetrable shield of politeness, this obvious determination not to be a bother to anyone, your dad wanted to tear it down. Force you to tackle the difficulties and become a McCabe from the get-go.”
Sounded like Frank.
It was also the way he would have treated any of his five other kids.
Rachel blew her nose. “But I wouldn’t let him,” she confessed, distraught. “I told him how overwhelmed I had been when I first married into the iconic Texas McCabe clan. How I had only become family bit by bit, and because of all you had been through, he needed to give you the room to absorb it all, on your own terms, in your own time.”
The overwhelming emotion in her low voice had his own throat tightening. “You were right,” he told her hoarsely, knowing how fragile he had been, how afraid he’d been of losing what he had left of the only life he had ever known—and his late mother.
But, on the other hand, if Frank had done that—treated him just like his siblings, instead of with kid gloves, maybe there wouldn’t have been such a feeling of apartness all these years.
Rachel touched his forearm gently. “Actually,” she corrected, practical and empathetic as ever, “your dad and I both were right in our approach. He should have pushed you more, made you see that he did care deeply about you, had from the very first moment he found out about you. In fact, in some ways, I think he and I both loved you more than your siblings at that stage because we hadn’t been given the chance to know you earlier. So we were making up for lost time.” She teared up again. “I just wish you had seen that.”
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in like the family he had always wanted her to be. “I knew it, Rachel. I felt it.” Deep in his soul and his heart.
She hugged him back with maternal ferocity. Then shifted back far enough to allege sadly, pragmatically, “You just didn’t return the emotions.”
Feeling the moment turn awkward again, Cullen dropped his arms. “I did.” He studied her wary expression. “I just...didn’t trust it. For my mom, love—romantic love, family love, love of friends—it all always faded.” The way Bridgett’s had apparently diminished for him.
Rachel shook her head. “From what I know, you are probably right about your mother’s love for everyone else, but not about what she felt for you, Cullen. I’m betting that was incredibly fierce from beginning to end. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have taken such pains to have you with her all those years. She wouldn’t have been afraid to share you with the rest of your kin.”
Rachel paused to let him absorb what she was saying.
When she was certain it had registered, she took both his hands tightly in hers. “If your mother hadn’t loved you with all her heart, Cullen, she could have left you with your dad at any time. She knew that. But she didn’t. Instead, she made the best life she could for you.”
She had, at that.
“Yes, it was a mistake, keeping you and your dad apart, but you have each other now.” Rachel sniffed again and continued in a low, quavering voice. “And that counts for a heck of a lot, doesn’t it?”
“It d
oes.” Knowing this had to be said, and said now, Cullen pushed the rusty-sounding words out. “And Rachel? Just for the record? As long as we’re being clear here?” He looked her in the eye. “You mean an awful lot to me, too.”
Her eyes shone.
They were silent.
She embraced him fiercely. “I want you to be happy and fulfilled, Cullen. And the only way that is ever going to happen,” she warned, “is if you stop holding back and seize the opportunity in front of you. Talk to your dad, Cullen. Start letting him be there for you the way he has always wanted to be. And after that? Open up your heart to Bridgett, too.”
They talked a little more, then Rachel left. Buoyed by her pep talk, Cullen returned to the ranch house, and began to prepare for what he was determined would be the most important evening of his life thus far.
He had just finished seasoning a couple of porterhouse steaks, when he got the text from Bridgett. Headed back to the ranch. Finally know what our next steps should be.
Our next steps.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, given that she intended to leave the Western Cross as soon as possible. Had she found a place? Decided to take Lucille Lockhart up on her offer, after all, and made a move-out plan she wanted to share with him? Or was she simply speaking in temporary generalities?
Hoping it was the latter, he poured premade salad into a bowl, put a couple of Idaho potatoes into the oven to bake and made sure there was charcoal in the grill. He had wine, too. Although he wasn’t sure she would want any.
Finished, he stepped out onto the front porch to wait for the little group he’d come to think of as his family. It wasn’t long before he saw Bridgett’s SUV coming up the drive. He walked out to help her, but only she emerged from the vehicle. He shoved aside his fear that this really was the end for them, and forced a welcoming smile. “Where are Robby and Riot?”
“In town, with my family. I told them I’d pick them up later, after we’d talked.”
Looked like he had one last chance to make things right. He damn well was not going to squander it. He escorted her away from the SUV. “Before you begin, I have some things to say to you, too.”
The Texas Cowboy's Baby Rescue Page 18