Rich Rancher's Redemption

by Maureen Child

  She watched him, wanting to remember every moment of this night. If she didn’t have a tomorrow with him at least she would have this memory. Expectation coiled deep inside her as they moved together, skin to skin, hands stroking, mouths tasting. Her breath came fast and short when he moved over her and when he pushed himself home, Jillian gasped, arching her back, moving with him in a silent dance of desire.

  Outside, the sun died and the darkness crept into the room, enfolding them in a deep, shadow-filled quiet. They moved as one, each of them pushing the other toward the edge and as she climbed, Jillian held on to him, arms around his neck, legs around his hips. When her body splintered into thousands of jagged shards, she had Jesse to anchor her. She held him as she trembled, then held him tighter as he joined her.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Jesse lay on his back and held her to his side. “I missed you.”

  He didn’t sound happy about admitting it, either. Still, she tipped her head back to look at him. “I wondered where you were.”

  “I meant to call...”

  “No,” she said, watching his eyes, “you didn’t.”

  Now he stared down at her, frowning. “I didn’t?”

  “No.” She trailed her fingers across his chest, feeling the solid thump of his heart. “You didn’t want to miss me, Jesse. Didn’t want to call me. You were trying to let me know that what we had that night was all there was going to be.”

  His frown deepened. “And how did I feel about you staying here tonight?”

  He was irritated, and she couldn’t have said why she found that a little entertaining, even under these circumstances. “You wanted me in your bed, but you don’t want me getting comfortable.”

  “Well, I sound like a real dick, don’t I?”

  Surprising herself, Jillian laughed a little. “No, you don’t. You just don’t want to love me.”

  He eased up onto his elbow and looked down at her. Jillian touched his cheek, then let her hand fall back. “I know how you feel. I didn’t want to love you, either. But I do.”

  He froze. It was the only word she could think of to describe what happened to him the minute the L word was mentioned. It was as if he wasn’t even breathing. His eyes flashed and those golden flecks shone in the dimness like spotlights.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You don’t get to tell me what I’m feeling,” Jillian said.

  “Why the hell not?” he demanded. “You just told me what I was thinking and feeling.”

  “Yes,” she said sadly, “but I was right and you’re wrong. I do love you.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Silence won’t change anything. Even if I never say it again, you’ll always know I feel it.” She’d known it would go this way and still Jillian had had to tell him. Love, when it finally arrived, just shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed.

  “I don’t want you to,” he said, sitting up and dragging her up with him. “There’s no future for us here, Jillian.”

  “I didn’t ask for a future, Jesse,” she reminded him. “I haven’t asked you for anything. What I’m feeling—”

  “Don’t—”

  “It’s a gift.” She shrugged and smiled in spite of everything. “I was afraid to love, too. Every man I’ve ever known has walked away from me.”

  “Jill...”

  “I told you my grandmother raised me,” she said and took one of his hands in hers. She rubbed her fingers across his palm, feeling the calluses and scars he’d earned through a lifetime of hard work. Jesse wasn’t a quitter. Jesse gave his word and kept it. Jesse was the kind of man you could count on.

  She wished he was hers. Looking up into his eyes she said, “My parents decided they didn’t much like having a child, so they left.”

  “Jillian—”

  “First my dad. I was really young and two years later, my mom left, too. Grandma Rhonda was my rock then.”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “I don’t need you to be sorry. I just want you to understand. I was engaged once, but he left, too. And then I met Rich, pretending to be Will, and I was so hungry to feel something, to love someone, I let him sweep me off my feet in spite of the fact I should have known better. Then he left, too.”

  He gritted his teeth and swallowed hard, but he didn’t interrupt her again.

  “So when I met you, I told myself that you would be just like every other man in the world.” She smiled sadly. “But you weren’t. You aren’t. And Mac saw it in you before I did.” Laughing a little, she said, “Mac loved you first. But I couldn’t. I didn’t trust myself. Or you. But Jesse...”

  She reached out to cup his cheek and only flinched a little when he pulled his head back. Sighing, she let her hand drop to her lap. “Jesse, you’re the one.”

  “I can’t be, Jill—”

  “I like you calling me that,” she said. “And as for me loving you, it’s too late. It just is. My love doesn’t depend on you loving me back or even on us being together. It’s just there.”

  He got up, walked to the fireplace and slapped one hand on the mantel to stare down at the cold, empty hearth. “I can’t do this. Be what you want.”

  “You are what I want.”

  He shot a hard look at her over his shoulder. “I’ve got a debt to pay. To Lucy. To Brody. I can’t claim a life for myself when their lives are broken because of me.”

  She scooted off the bed, walked to him and asked, “Are you talking about the accident? Lucy told me about it.”

  “Did she tell you it was my fault? That Dane died because I wasn’t careful enough?”

  “No, of course not.” Jillian reached out to lay one hand on his shoulder and she could feel the tension in his body. “She doesn’t think that, Jesse.”

  “Whether she does or not, I know it’s true and that’s enough.”

  “Jesse, it’s crazy to blame yourself for a horrible accident.”

  “Yeah? What if something happened to Mac? Would you be so willing to forgive and forget then? What if I let her get hurt?”

  He was so embroiled in his own guilt, there was no reaching him. No way to convince him that what had happened to Dane hadn’t been his fault. He was too determined to punish himself for it.

  And still, she tried.

  “I would know,” she said, “that you would always do everything in your power to protect those you love. You’re not God, Jesse. You don’t get to make the big decisions. The world is not a safe place. People get hurt. They die.”

  “Not because of me,” he muttered thickly. “Not again.”

  Jillian’s heart ached and she felt as if she’d been wrapped in ice. She was cold, head to toe, and knew that she’d never really be warm again. Because loving Jesse wasn’t enough. She wanted him to love her back. Wanted the whole dream.

  And she wasn’t going to get it.

  “It’s over between us, Jillian,” he said and his voice was so tight, so deep, it seemed to reverberate in the air around her. “Best if we just don’t see each other anymore.”

  She rocked on her heels, shocked at how quickly this night had gone from beautiful to awful. “What about our partnership?”

  Nodding, he said, “That doesn’t change. I’ll help you get the shop and I wish you luck with it.”

  “Wow. Thanks.”

  His head whipped up and his gaze bored into hers. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “And I told you why that’s not going to happen.”

  “You gave me excuses, Jesse. Not a reason.”

  Even in the darkness, she saw his eyes glitter. “I gave you all I can.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “But that’s your decision and we’ll both have to live with it, won’t we?” She took a
deep breath then added, “If it’s okay with you, I’ll spend the night in the guest room with Mac.” She stepped back, putting some distance between them. He didn’t notice because he hadn’t looked at her again. “I’d rather not wake her up.”

  He nodded. “That’s fine.”

  She gathered up her clothes and walked out of the room. But on the threshold she stopped for one more look at him. He was standing as he had been. Alone. In the dark.

  “I was wrong, Jesse,” she said softly. “I guess you are just like every man I’ve ever known. You’re walking away, too.”

  Ten

  The next couple of days passed in a blur of activity.

  Jillian’s heart was bruised and battered, but she buried her pain by focusing on Mac and on the shop she was about to open. If her thoughts wandered to Jesse a few dozen times a day, she pushed them aside as quickly as she could.

  During the day, she could manage. It was her dreams at night that kept tripping her up. She dreamed of him holding her, smiling down at her, kissing her. She woke up with the taste of him in her mouth and had to choke down fresh pain every morning.

  It didn’t help that her baby girl kept asking for Jesse. Mac couldn’t understand why her favorite person was gone from her life and trying to explain to a nearly two-year-old was a lesson in futility.

  Just that morning, Jillian had been getting Mac ready to go when the little girl put both hands on her mother’s cheeks.

  “See Jesse?”

  Pain, sharp and fresh, stabbed at her heart as she said, “No, sweetie. We’re going to the day care. You can play with your friends...”

  “See Jesse. Horsies.” Mac’s little mouth turned mutinous.

  “We can’t, baby.”

  “Mama, Jesse.”

  “Jesse can’t play today, baby, so we’re just going to go to work, okay?” Please be okay with this, Jillian pleaded silently. She hoped Mac stopped looking for Jesse soon, because she hated the thought that her daughter was in as much pain as she herself was.

  One tear rolled down Mac’s cheek, and Jillian scooped her up for a tight hug meant to comfort them both.

  Of course, it hadn’t. How could it, when they were both missing the same man?

  Sighing, Jillian went back to stacking the order of pie plates that had been delivered just that morning. For now, she was going with standard, aluminum pie plates. But one day, she wanted to invest in personalized pie tins with the name of the shop stamped on them. Then she could offer people a discount on their next pie if they brought in the used tins.

  She could see just how the shop would be and Jillian really wished she was more excited about it. She’d thought about doing this for years and now that it was here, it was shadowed by the loss of Jesse.

  “Stop it,” she ordered grimly. “Stop wishing and thinking and start doing.”

  With that thought firmly in mind, Jillian continued stacking the plates and let her mind wander to everything else that still needed to be done. She had her tables and chairs—she’d found them at an outdoor living shop. Wrought-iron, the tables had glass tops and were just big enough for two or three people to share comfortably and the matching chairs were perfect. Getting them set up in the front of the shop had made everything feel immediate. Real. The walls were painted a cheerful pale yellow and there were baskets of flowers hanging from the ceiling in the corners of the room.

  Her supplies were ordered along with the kitchen tools she’d need to make this dream a reality. Without Jesse’s help, she wouldn’t have been able to do this and she knew it. She only wished he were there to see it happen. But it seemed you could only have part of a dream.

  Jillian made lists of her lists just to keep everything in order. She kept records of every penny spent on her laptop along with projections of what would need to come next. There was so much to buy, not to mention the employees she’d have to hire. But that was a worry for another day. Right now, she had to set up the kitchen just the way she wanted it.

  Since Jillian was still working half days at the day care—at least until they found someone to replace her—she was able to leave Mac there while she worked at the shop.

  “Thank God,” she murmured, because trying to work while keeping Mac out of trouble would have been impossible.

  As she finished with the last of the pie tins, Jillian gave herself a mental pat on the back. And a second later, she heard the front door open and Lucy’s voice call out, “Hey, Jill, are you in here?”

  A sinking sensation opened up in Jillian’s chest. She hadn’t spoken to Lucy since the breakup with Jesse. Avoiding her friend hadn’t been easy, but she hadn’t wanted to put Lucy in the middle. And now, she didn’t have a clue what she would say to her. But there was no way to elude Lucy today. “In the kitchen.”

  Lucy bustled in, carrying a cardboard tray with two cups of coffee and a bag from the diner. She wore jeans, boots and a dark red top. Her choppy brown hair was wind ruffled and her eyes pinned Jillian. “Hi, stranger! Thought you could use a break. I brought doughnuts.”

  “God, that sounds great,” Jillian admitted. She hadn’t had much of an appetite the last week, but a doughnut was always good.

  “Good. Let’s go try out the new chairs and table out front.” Lucy turned around and headed out, talking as she went. “I love them, by the way. I’m devastated that I was not included in the shopping trip, but I can forgive—as long as you call me for the next excursion.”

  “I know I should have called you,” Jillian admitted. “It’s just—”

  Lucy set the coffees down and spread some napkins on the table before laying out the doughnuts. “No problem. Well, of course there’s a problem, but I know it’s not me. It’s undoubtedly my brother.

  “Plus,” Lucy added, breaking off a piece of rainbow sprinkle doughnut and popping it into her mouth, “said brother has spent the last two days with the lovely personality of a bear with a jagged thorn in its paw. He’s infuriated so many people, all of the cowboys are avoiding him and Carlos is threatening a walkout if Jesse doesn’t stay away from the stables.”

  Jillian smiled.

  “Ah. This pleases you.” Lucy nodded sagely. “Completely understandable because he’s probably the one who caused whatever it is that happened. Since I haven’t talked to you in forever, I brought doughnuts to bribe you into telling me what’s going on. So spill.”

  Jillian slumped onto the chair opposite her friend. She could pretend otherwise, but why bother? For two days now, her heart had ached and she’d been walking in a fog of misery, so why not share it with the one woman she knew would understand? “It’s a mess, Lucy. All of it.”

  She reached across the table and patted Jillian’s hand. “Have a doughnut. Sugar is a cure-all. And then tell me.”

  Taking a sip of coffee, Jillian had a bite of doughnut and felt the sugar rush. Maybe Lucy had a point. “It’s my fault.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Smiling sadly, Jillian said, “Oh, it is. I told him I love him and that’s when everything went to hell.”

  Lucy sighed and took a sip of coffee. “It’s so disappointing to find out my brother is a moron.” Waving one hand in a “come on” motion, she prodded, “Tell me.”

  So Jillian did. She told her friend the whole story and in talking about it, she felt as if a blister on her soul had popped and she could take a breath easier than she had all week. Finally, she said, “He told me he can’t be with me and Mac because he owes too much to you and Brody.”

  “What?” Clearly stunned, Lucy asked, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “He blames himself for your husband’s death.”

  “Of course he does,” Lucy muttered, shaking her head. “You know, when our father died, Jesse was sixteen. As the oldest, he immediately appointed himself the ‘man of the house’ and started in on trying to manage all of us. Mom finally
put a stop to that, but she couldn’t make him see that the family and the ranch weren’t solely his responsibility.” She crumbled a piece of doughnut until it was crumbs and sprinkles, then stared at the mess.

  Eventually, she lifted her gaze to Jillian’s. “When Dane died, I was the one racked with guilt. If I hadn’t gone along with his idea to be a part of the ranch, he’d still be alive. If I’d moved with him to Houston, he wouldn’t have died. I drove myself crazy for a while until Mom stepped in and made me see that it was just an accident. If we’d lived somewhere else, maybe it would have been a car wreck that took Dane. We’ll never know.”

  “Jesse believes he could have stopped it.”

  “That’s because Jesse still believes he’s the Grand Poo-bah of the Universe.” Scowling, Lucy added, “I’ve told him and told him that Dane’s death wasn’t his fault, but he won’t accept it. And still, I never thought he’d take this so far.”

  Now Jillian had guilt gnawing at her. “Lucy, I didn’t mean to make you feel badly about this. It’s not your fault.”

  “Oh,” her friend said quickly, “no worries. I know exactly whose fault this mess is. Jesse is throwing himself on a pyre that only he can see. Idiot.”

  Jillian laughed a little and felt better than she had in days. She should have called Lucy sooner. Should have trusted her friend to help her through this.

  “You really do love him, don’t you?” Lucy’s question sounded wistful.

  “I do. It would be so much easier if I didn’t.”

  “Who wants easy?” Lucy shook her head. “Mom used to tell me that nothing great comes easy. So I’ll take hard if I can have great at the end of it.”

  Jillian thought about it for a second. “I guess I would, too.”

  “Good,” Lucy said with a chuckle. “Because I guarantee that life with Jesse will be hard. The man has a head like concrete.”

  “Lucy... Jesse was very clear. He’s not interested.” And Jillian wasn’t going to wait and hope that things would change only to have her heart broken again. How many times could she recover from that kind of pain?