The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011

by Catherine Mann

  “You’re leaving? Already?”

  “No point in staying longer, is there?” Her voice got brighter, sharper.

  “No.” He glanced at the paper in his hand again. Gina was leaving. The marriage was over. “No point.”

  “Look, Adam, there’s one more thing.” She took a deep breath, then blew the air out in a rush. “It’s something you should know before I go. I love you, Adam.”

  He swayed a little as those four words punched at him. She loved him and she was leaving. Why wasn’t he saying something? Why the hell couldn’t he think?

  “Always have,” she admitted and wiped away another tear with an impatient gesture. “You don’t have to say anything or do anything, so don’t try, okay? I don’t think either one of us could take it.” She gave him a brief smile, but he saw her bottom lip tremble.

  He started around the edge of his desk, not sure what he was going to do or say, only knowing that he had to do something. But she stopped him by holding up one hand and backing up a little. “Don’t, okay?” She shook her head. “Don’t touch me and don’t be nice.” She laughed shortly and it sounded like glass breaking. “God, don’t be nice. I uh, wanted you to know, I won’t be staying in Birkfield. I’m leaving. Tomorrow.”

  “Leaving? For where? For how long? What? Why?”

  “I’m moving to Colorado.” She gave him a smile that didn’t fool either of them. “Going to stay with my brother Nick and his family until I find a place of my own.” She was backing up toward the door, keeping her gaze fixed on him as if worried he’d try to keep her from leaving. “I can’t stay here, Adam. I can’t raise my child so close to a father who doesn’t want it. I can’t be near you knowing that I’ll never have you. I need somewhere fresh, Adam. My baby deserves to be happy. So do I.”

  “Gina, you’re throwing this at me too fast. What the hell am I supposed to do about this?”

  “Nothing, Adam.” Her hand fisted around the doorknob behind her. “This isn’t about you. So anyway … goodbye.”

  She was changing her whole life because of him. He felt like a jerk, but couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. She shouldn’t have to leave. Move away from the home she loved all because of him. “Gina, damn it—”

  She shook her head. “It’s just how it has to be, Adam. So, have a good life, okay? Be well.”

  Then she was gone and Adam was alone.

  Just the way he wanted it.

  Twelve

  “You are a fool.”

  Adam didn’t even look up when Esperanza served his breakfast along with her opinion. Morning sunlight splashed across him as he sat at the head of the long, cherrywood table in the dining room. One man at a table for twelve.

  Quite the statement on his life.

  His coffee was cold, but he had the distinct impression asking for a refill wouldn’t get him far. Glancing down at his breakfast plate, he noticed the scrambled eggs were runny—he loathed wet eggs and Esperanza knew it. The bacon was charred on one side and raw on the other and his toast was black.

  Pretty much the same breakfast he’d been served every morning since Gina left.

  Complaining about it wouldn’t change anything, he knew. Esperanza had been with the family for way too long. Once a woman’s paddled your backside for you when you were a kid, you no longer had any authority over her, no matter what you’d prefer to think.

  “Thanks,” he said, picking up his fork and wondering if he could just eat the tops of the eggs. Damn it, he hadn’t told Gina to leave. That had been her idea. She’d walked away under her own power, but facts didn’t seem to matter to his housekeeper.

  Did they matter to him, either? Not for the first time since she’d been gone, Adam wondered what she was doing at that moment. Sitting around her brother’s breakfast table? Laughing, talking, enjoying herself? Or was she missing him? Did she think about him at all?

  “You are going to simply sit here and do nothing while the mother of your child is off somewhere in the wilderness?” Esperanza stood alongside the table, arms folded over her chest, the toe of her shoe tapping briskly against the wood floor. Her dark eyes snapped with fury and her mouth was so thin a slash, it had almost disappeared.

  Adam pushed thoughts of Gina away, though they didn’t go far. He blew out a breath and nibbled at a bite of egg before grimacing and giving it up. He and his housekeeper had had this same conversation for three weeks now. At every opportunity, Esperanza alternately cajoled, harangued and berated him for allowing Gina to leave him. “Colorado is hardly the wilderness,” he pointed out.

  “It is not here.”

  “True.” Adam dropped his fork onto the plate and resigned himself to another hungry day. Maybe he’d drive into town for a decent breakfast. But as soon as he considered it, he changed his mind. In town, there would be people. People wanting to talk to him. To tell him how sorry they were to hear his marriage had ended. People fishing for more information than he was willing to share.

  “You should go after her.”

  He finally shot his housekeeper a dirty look. She remained unmoved. “Esperanza, Gina left. She wanted to go. We had a deal, remember? The deal’s finished.”

  “Deal.” That single word carried so much disgust, it practically vibrated in the air. “What you had was a marriage. What you are going to have is a child. A child you will never see. This is what you want, Adam? This is the life you wish to lead?”

  No, he thought grimly, looking at the chair where Gina used to sit. Imagining her smile. Her laughter, the gentle touch of her hand when she reached out to pat his arm. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d come to depend on seeing her every day. Hearing her. Talking with her. Arguing with her.

  In the last few weeks, life on the King ranch had returned to “normal.” The Gypsy horses were gone, back at the Torino ranch until Gina sent for them to join her in Colorado. The constant stream of visitors who’d come to buy those horses had ended. There were no more vases of fresh flowers in his bedroom, because Gina wasn’t there to pick them. There were no more late night movies played or bowls of popcorn eaten, because Gina had left him.

  There was no more life at the ranch.

  His world had become the stark black and white he’d once known and cherished. Only now … he hated it. He hated the sameness. The quiet. The everlasting ordinariness of his existence. It was like the breakfasts Esperanza had been serving him. Tasteless.

  But he couldn’t change it. Gina had gone. She’d moved on to build a life without him and that was for the best. For her. For their baby. For him. He was almost sure of it.

  “She has been gone three weeks already,” Esperanza reminded him.

  Three weeks, five days and eleven hours. But who was counting?

  “You must go to her. Bring her back where she belongs.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Only to a man,” she pointed out, grabbing up his untouched breakfast and heading for the kitchen.

  He half turned in his chair to shout after her, “I am a man!”

  “A foolish one!” she shouted right back.

  “You’re fired!”

  “Hah!”

  Adam slumped in his chair and shook his head. Firing her would do no good. Esperanza would never leave. She’d be right here for the next twenty years, probably making him miserable at every opportunity.

  But then, he wondered as he shoved himself up from the table, did he really deserve any better? He’d let Gina go without a word because he hadn’t been able to risk caring for her. For their child.

  Which made him, he knew, a coward.

  And everybody knew that cowards died a thousand deaths.

  By afternoon, Adam had irritated, angered and annoyed all of his employees and was even starting to get on his own nerves. So he closed himself up in his study, made some phone calls and started looking for new projects. After all, he had the precious land he’d wanted so badly. Now he needed something new to concentrate on.

  The
knock on the study door aggravated him. “What is it?”

  Sal Torino opened the door and gave him such a long, level stare that everything in Adam went cold and hard as ice. He jumped up from his chair. There was only one reason for Sal to be there. “Is it Gina? Is she all right?”

  Gina’s father stepped into the room, closed the door behind him and studied Adam for a moment or two before speaking. “I’ve come because it’s only right you know.”

  The ice moved through his veins, sluggishly headed for his heart. Adam clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and fought for control. “Just tell me. Gina. Is she all right?”

  “Gina is fine,” Sal said, walking slowly around the big room, as if seeing it for the first time.

  Relief swept through Adam so fast, it left his knees shaking. He felt as though he’d been running in place for an hour. His heart was pounding, his breath was laboring in his lungs and his legs were rubbery. What the hell kind of stunt was Sal up to?

  “Damn it, Sal. What was the point of that?” He shouted the question, as adrenaline drained slowly away. “Want to see if you could get a rise out of me? Is that it?”

  “It was a test of sorts,” Sal admitted, stopping on the opposite side of the wide desk. “I wanted to know,” the older man said, his dark eyes narrowed, his mouth grim, “if you loved my Gina. Now I know.”

  Adam shoved one hand through his hair, then wiped his face. Love. There was a word he’d avoided thinking about over the last few weeks. Even when he lay awake at night, alternately planning on either flying to Colorado to kidnap Gina or burying himself in work, he’d trained himself to never think that word.

  It wasn’t part of his plan.

  He’d tried love before and he was no good at it. Love messed people up. Ruined lives. Ended some. He wasn’t going there again. Even if the heart he’d thought long dead was now very alive and aching.

  Not something he was going to admit to anyone else.

  “Sorry to disappoint. Naturally I was concerned for her. But if she’s fine, then I don’t see a reason for this visit.” Sitting down in his desk chair again, he picked up a pen, lowered his gaze to the papers in front of him and said, “Thanks for stopping by.”

  Sal didn’t leave, though. He leaned forward, bracing his work-worn hands on the edge of the desk and waited until Adam lifted his gaze before saying, “I have something to tell you, Adam. Something I think you have the right to know.”

  “Say it then and get it done,” Adam muttered, bracing himself for whatever news the older man had come to deliver. How bad could it be? Was Gina already in love with someone else? That thought sliced through him, even as he discounted it. It might feel like years since she’d been gone, but it had only been a few weeks. So what could possibly have happened?

  “Gina lost the baby.”

  “What?” He whispered the word and the pen he held dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. “When?”

  “Yesterday,” Sal said, his features full of pity and sorrow.

  Yesterday. How had that happened and he hadn’t sensed it? Felt it somehow? Gina had been alone and he’d been here. Tucked away in an insulated world of his own design. She’d needed him and he hadn’t been there.

  “Gina? How’s Gina?” Stupid question, Adam thought instantly. He knew how she would be. She’d wanted that child so much. She would be devastated. Crushed. Heartsick.

  And a moment later, he realized to his own astonishment that he felt those things, too. A profound sense of loss shook him to the bone and he was so unprepared for it, he didn’t know what to think.

  “She will be fine in time,” Sal told him softly. “She didn’t want you to know, but I felt it was only right.”

  “Of course.” Of course he should know. Their child was dead. Though it hadn’t taken a breath, Adam felt the loss as surely as he had the loss of Jeremy years ago. It wasn’t just the death of the child. It was the death of dreams. Hopes. The future.

  “Also,” Sal added, waiting now for Adam to look at him, “you should know that Gina will be staying in Colorado.”

  “She. Staying. What?” Adam shook his head, trying to focus past the pain that was threading its way through his bloodstream.

  “She’s not coming home,” Sal said, then added softly, “unless something happens to change her mind.”

  Adam hardly noticed when Sal left. His mind kept flashing with images of Gina until the pain in his heart was almost too much to bear. For weeks now, he’d thought of nothing but her, despite trying to shut himself off from the world. Return to the solitary existence he’d become so accustomed to.

  But no matter how hard he tried, thoughts of her had remained. Taunting him. Torturing him. Wondering how she was. Where she was living. What she would tell their child about him.

  Now there was no baby. Gina was in pain, so much more pain than he was feeling and she was alone in this, despite her family, she was as alone as he was. And suddenly, Adam knew what he wanted more than anything. He wanted to hold her. Dry her tears. Comfort her and wrap himself up in the warmth of her.

  He wanted to fall asleep holding her and wake up to look into her eyes. Standing up again, he turned, looked out the wide window behind him at the sweep of lawn leading to the main road. The ancient trees lining the driveway danced in the wind, leaves already turning gold breaking free to twist and fly through the air. Fall was coming fast and soon, the days would be cold and the nights far too long.

  Just as his life would be long and cold and empty without Gina.

  “Esperanza was right,” he muttered, turning to reach for the phone on his desk. “Half-right, anyway. I was a fool. But no more.”

  Gina laughed at the little boy bouncing around in the saddle. He was so excited at being a “cowboy,” he hadn’t stopped grinning since Gina had put him on the horse.

  Thankfully, even though her brother Nick was technically a high school football coach, he had a small ranch outside of town. You really could take the boy off the home ranch but couldn’t take the ranch out of the boy, she thought. And being here, working on Nick and his wife’s small spread had been good for her. She’d spent time with her nephews and niece and had kept herself so busy that she’d only had time to think about Adam every other minute.

  Surely that was progress.

  “You’re thinking about him again.”

  She turned to smile and shrug at her older brother. “Only a little.”

  “I talked to Tony last night,” Nick said, leaning his forearms on the top rail of the corral fence. “If it helps any, he says Adam looks miserable.”

  Small consolation, Gina thought, but she’d take it. She leaned back against the fence and said, “Is it wrong to say ‘glad to hear it’?”

  “No. Not wrong at all.” Nick tugged at her ponytail. “Tony’s willing to go beat him up for you. You just say the word.”

  “You guys are the best.”

  He grinned and his golden eyes twinkled. “So we keep telling you.”

  She smiled again and turned to look when a car pulled into the yard behind them. She didn’t recognize the bright yellow van, so her heartbeat didn’t stutter until the driver opened the door and stepped out.

  “What d’ya know?” Nick mumbled.

  “Adam,” Gina said on a sigh, straightening up and wishing she were dressed a little better. Silly, she knew. But the purely female part of her couldn’t help being irritated that she was wearing worn jeans and dirty boots for Adam’s surprise arrival.

  He started toward her and Gina took a step before turning back to her brother. “Nick, would you keep an eye on Mikey?”

  “Sure thing,” her brother said with a brief nod. “But if you need me to get rid of Adam, just call out.”

  Get rid of him? No. She didn’t want to get rid of him. She wanted to luxuriate in just looking at him. How pitiful was that? God, he was gorgeous. Even better than the dream images she saw of him whenever she closed her eyes. Her blood was humming, her heartbeat pounding and her
mouth was so dry, she could hardly swallow.

  Gina forced herself to take slow, even steps toward him when her instincts were telling her to run, throw herself into his arms and never let go. How long did it take, she wondered, before love faded? Months? Years?

  “Gina,” he said and his voice was a deep rumble that seemed to reverberate inside her chest.

  “Adam. What are you doing here?”

  He scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “I had to see you. Took one of the family jets. Rented a car at the airport—” He paused to give the van a dirty look.

  “Yeah, nice color.”

  “All they had,” he said.

  She smiled. “I didn’t ask how you got here. Just why you are here.”

  “To see you. To tell you—”

  His eyes were flashing with emotion—more than she’d ever seen in those dark depths before and Gina wondered frantically what was going on. Hope reared up inside her and she quickly squashed it. No point in pumping up a balloon that Adam would undoubtedly pop.

  Then he frowned, looked her up and down and said, “Are you all right? Should you be up and around?”

  “What?” She laughed at him. “I’m fine, Adam. What’s going on?”

  “I brought you something.” He dug a folded paper out of his back pocket and held it out to her. “This is yours.”

  It only took a glance to tell her it was the deed to the land he’d wanted so badly. “What?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Simple to understand. I’m breaking our bargain. The land’s yours again.”

  She looked from him to the paper and back again. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Your father told me.”

  A niggling doubt began tugging at the edges of her mind. What had her interfering father been up to now? “Told you what exactly?”

  Adam stepped close, dropped both hands onto her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “He told me about you losing the baby.”