“We can’t,” he said, loosening his grip on her shoulders. But his words begged her to tell him otherwise.
Harper doubted that a moment of foolishness at forty-six could heal the wounds caused by a moment of foolishness at seventeen. But she didn’t care. She had this, even if all turned to ashes in the very next instant.
“We must,” she replied.
He looked into her eyes, a searching look she wasn’t sure how to answer. Then he lowered his hand to her knee, drew it under her skirt, along her thigh, stalking her heat as he had the first time he’d touched her.
She moaned softly, heard the rustle of his zipper. With little adjustment, he was inside her, a deep, hard thrust to match the kisses they had shared. She cried out and began to meet his thrusts with a fierceness of her own. She clutched his shoulders, drew her legs around him, felt the fury in their every move.
Swiftly, their emotions peaked. She felt him swell within her, felt her own electric moment pulsing through her. She cried out and so did he, a sound ripped from his throat as if against his will.
He fell against her and she wrapped her arms around him. She reminded herself this wouldn’t last. Reality would intrude all too soon, robbing her of this reminder of how it felt to be close to someone else, so close you weren’t sure where you left off and he began. This brief connection would have to do her for the next thirty years, she supposed.
But it will be okay, she told herself. I will be okay.
When he rolled back, he touched her cheek tenderly, the way he used to do. The empty bleakness in his eyes had disappeared, replaced by that sense of wonder she had often seen there, after.
“You’re crying,” he whispered.
She shook her head, although her damp eyes made a lie of the gesture.
“This isn’t…” He brushed an errant curl off her forehead. “I didn’t intend to be such…such an animal.”
She felt the tremble in her tentative smile. “It’s how you felt.”
He studied her for a long time, perhaps as unsure about what would happen next as she felt. “And how did you feel?”
“Like it’s all unreal. Just another one of my…”
He waited, and when she didn’t go on, he said, “Say it.”
“Just another one of my dreams.”
He nodded. “We have to talk.”
And now, the end of the dream. “Yes.”
Awkwardly they slid off opposite sides of her bed and straightened their clothes.
He paced the room, looking at things as if her personal belongings might offer some explanation for what had just happened. Harper’s heart leaped when he stopped at her dresser and picked up the framed photo of Dillon and Christine.
“This is the boy,” he said.
“Yes.” Please, she prayed, let him put it down. Give me a chance to explain first.
“Hardly a boy, I suppose,” he said, and set the photo back in its spot between her mother’s Tiffany lamp and the silver music box Dillon had given her for her thirtieth birthday.
She let out the breath she’d been holding. “No.”
“That’s his daughter?”
“Yes. Christine.”
“So you’re a grandmother.”
And you’re a grandfather. “Let’s go down, Trent. There’s a lot we need to…”
He picked up the photo again. She knew the minute recognition dawned from the way his back and shoulders tensed. He turned to her, the color drained from his face. She closed her eyes, sagged against the chest of drawers.
“My God,” he said. “Oh, my God.”
“Trent, let me explain.”
He laughed, an ugly sound that chilled her. There was no anger in his face, but the coldness that had come into his eyes immobilized her. He looked at her, then back at the photo. Still clutching the photo, he turned and walked out of the room. By the time Harper managed to get her legs moving, he was down the stairs.
“Trent, wait,” she called.
He didn’t even slow down. He walked out the way he’d come. She was still standing at the top of the stairs when she heard his car roaring back down the lane toward the highway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE CAR HAD barely stopped in the driveway when Christine tumbled out into the dusky twilight, eager to tell her grandmother about the day’s events.
“I never thought she’d be so excited about a horse show,” Dillon said to Angie.
“She did seem to have a good time,” Angie agreed.
Dillon smiled as he watched his daughter run up the steps. “The best since she came to live with me.”
The day had been the happiest Dillon had spent in a long time. Christine had chattered almost nonstop. But more importantly, she had chattered to him. She’d ignored him for so long he felt overwhelmed by her sudden attention.
“I enjoyed it, too,” Angie said. “Thanks for letting me go along.”
Reluctant to let go of the day’s magic, Dillon wasn’t ready to go into the house. He turned toward a barely discernable path among the azaleas. “Do you mind walking for a few minutes? Christine won’t stop talking for half an hour.”
“I’d love to if you’re sure the azaleas won’t swallow us up.”
He knew the house and grounds needed attention, but he hadn’t noticed until now how badly overgrown everything had become. He hadn’t noticed a lot of things until Angie arrived. It was as though he had been sleepwalking through life, postponing everything that mattered.
His life had no focus, no purpose. He’d come home with his daughter to find one. But he realized, now that his plans were blowing up in his face, that purpose wasn’t something he could find on the outside.
And what was the answer? He wanted his land, his daughter, a family, a feeling of belonging, the satisfaction of good clean physical exhaustion at the end of the day. He was a farmer, a country boy, and he’d never be anything else.
They walked together down the path dotted with patches of weeds between the stepping stones.
“Summer and fall nights are always beautiful here, but I like spring the best. I always was a sucker for the promise of a new season.”
“Did you always want to farm?”
“Always. Nothing is more essential to life than the earth under our feet.”
“That’s an unusual attitude for a man these days.”
“No more unusual than a woman leaving a successful career in banking to open an equestrian center.” They had wandered into a forest of azaleas. “Actually, I want pretty much the same things as most people.”
“And what would they be?” She smiled softly. “I don’t think you’re at all like most people.”
She was going to make him put it into words.
“I want a better relationship with Christine. I’m short-tempered and I don’t know much about children, but I want her to come to me when she needs comforting. I want to see her smile and laugh with happiness when I come home.”
They had reached the small gazebo in the middle of the yard. It looked forlorn, abandoned, its paint nearly gone.
“That all?” Angie asked.
“I want someone to share my life,” he said. He watched her face. It was easy to see in the moonlight, but he couldn’t see any change in her expression. “Someone who’ll love me, Christine, the life I’ve chosen. Someone who can bear with my temper.”
He sighed as he squared his shoulders and shrugged off some of the tension brought on by his confession.
“Now it’s your turn.”
Angie smiled. It was such an easy, natural smile.
“I want my horses and enough land to enjoy them,” Angie said. “I also want a family. I want stability, a feeling of belonging. I’ve never lived anywhere for long. And I lost both my parents. Maybe that’s why I’ve clung to my horses. They wouldn’t leave me, even if they do dump me on my backside from time to time.”
“Doesn’t sound like we’re very different,” Dillon said.
“That’s what I f
igured,” Angie said.
Then she was smarter than he was.
“Do you trust the slats?” Angie said, speaking of the bench in the arbor.
“We’d better not.”
He knew it was his turn to speak. He wanted to, but the words wouldn’t come. Everything seemed to well up and jam in his throat. He compromised by taking her hand.
She let him.
It seemed right. He could see himself still walking in the shadows of the oak and magnolia trees years from now, holding Angie’s hand, searching for words to explain his feelings. He wanted to walk with her, to share his days, to share his nights, to share himself as no one had ever let him share.
With her he didn’t feel the sense of loneliness that had been his companion so much of his life. Is this what a man felt when he fell truly in love? Could it be as simple as the desire to walk hand in hand through a garden, hearts forever linked?
Giving in to impulse, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her gently.
“What was that for?” she asked a trifle breathlessly, when she emerged from his embrace. “Before you answer, let me warn you that it had better not be thanks for keeping you company all day.”
He held her close. “It is, but only a little bit.”
“It had better be very little.”
“What would you want it to be?”
“That’s one question you have to answer. You’d better think carefully before you do.”
He chuckled softly. “I don’t have to think about what I feel. I just have to try to understand it well enough to put it into words.”
“So far, so good,” she said, leaning against him as they started to walk again.
“I like you.”
“That’s a relief. It’s nice to know you don’t go about kissing women you dislike.”
“I’m thinking about a partnership,” he said, welcoming the lighthearted feeling she injected into the evening.
Angie stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him. “If you’re going to start talking business—”
He kissed her. It might not be the most effective way to silence her, but it was the most enjoyable.
“I see you’re not.”
“No,” he whispered without letting their lips completely lose contact. “But about that partnership…” He didn’t finish his thought. It didn’t seem necessary at the moment. Angie was kissing him back, and he found that more to his liking than talking.
“About this partnership,” she murmured a little while later when her head was resting against his shoulder.
The screen door to the house slammed. “Daddy!” It was Christine. “Angie! Floretha says it’s supper time!”
“You’d think with three thousand acres, a man would have a little privacy,” Dillon grumbled. But he wasn’t entirely unhappy. Christine had called his name first. “We’ll have to continue this later. Don’t forget where we left off.”
“Not a chance,” Angie assured him.
TRENT WALKED THE STREETS of Collins, feeling once again like an exile, an outsider.
His suit lay in a heap on the floor of his room in the motel outside Camden, which was how far he’d driven before his fury ran out. Then, with the freeway back to Charlotte just a few miles off, he had realized that running away wasn’t the answer. Not this time.
Trouble was, he didn’t know the answer.
He’d sat on the foot of the king-size bed trying to focus on the motel TV, where baseball aired on the sports network. His mind wouldn’t stick to the game. He was restless. He was making himself crazy, staring at the framed photo he’d carried out of the house at Weddington Farms.
He’d changed into jeans and a faded sport shirt and headed out for a drive. Just to clear his head. He’d ended up in Collins, parked along Broad Street.
So he walked.
He paused in front of the fire hydrant, remembering the first time he’d laid eyes on Harper. He noted the new sign and the new name for the textile company she now ran and tried to reconcile his memories of the reckless hoyden she had been with the idea of her as a businesswoman. He walked until he found the mill cottage he’d lived in those few short weeks and was pleased to see how nicely all the houses on the street had been renovated.
He couldn’t find the spot in the woods where he and Harper had first made love. The land had been cleared and houses built during the boom in the seventies.
“Whatcha lookin’ for, mister?”
Trent turned toward a freckle-faced boy, maybe eight or ten, sitting on his bike at the end of the culde-sac.
Good question, Trent thought. “Nothing, really. I used to hang out here, that’s all.”
The boy looked skeptical. Trent supposed it was hard for this kid to imagine a silver-haired old geezer like Trent ever being young enough to hang out.
“Are you homeless? Mom says homeless people don’t have cars and that’s why they walk around all the time.”
Homeless? “I suppose you could say I am.”
The boy’s eyes grew wide, and in a flash he pedaled away, no doubt having been warned about strangers. Trent smiled and kept walking, between two houses and into the woods beyond.
Was he homeless? He hadn’t thought so, but he supposed he’d really been nothing but an interloper for thirty years now. Living in somebody else’s house, living off somebody else’s money, loving somebody else’s daughter. None of it was his. None of it made him belong.
The one thing he’d belonged to, he’d walked out on.
He hadn’t expected to be so moved by the sight of Harper. She was older, of course, but no less beautiful than she’d been as a girl. More so, actually, because the willful petulance had left her eyes and no longer molded her lips into a pretty pout. The years had added grace and softness. Or maybe it was simply life, and the pain it always brought, that had made the difference in her.
But it wasn’t her beauty that had caught him by the throat. What had shaken him was the realization that he had built his life on self-deception, a foundation Harper had snatched from beneath his feet.
When Trent left Collins, angry and wounded, he’d told himself he hated Harper, as he hated all rich people. His anger had driven his marriage to Angie’s mother, a marriage that had turned out better than he had any right to expect He had never felt great passion for his wife, but he grew to love her tender ways. And he dearly loved his stepdaughter, who became the focal point of his life.
Although Trent had been a good and faithful husband for many years, he had never been content. Over the years, whenever he thought of Harper, the only emotion he allowed himself was a glimpse of his old anger. The purchase of Weddington Farms, the site of his worst humiliation, was to have been the death blow to whatever anger and hurt remained. With that gesture, he’d told himself, it would be over.
But when she told him she’d loved him all these years, Trent had realized the truth about himself. He couldn’t have nursed this grudge for so long if he hadn’t still loved her, too.
For a few moments, that had seemed to make things so simple. For a few moments, he had been inside her, been a part of her, and his heart had soared with the certainty that love could overcome three decades of bitterness.
Then he’d seen the picture and had known the truth. He had a son. And she had kept that from him.
But why? None of this made sense. He’d heard her himself, the day they’d planned to elope, crying on Floretha’s shoulder about the baby she was carrying. The baby she’d tried to foist off on him. The baby she’d said was Red Jannik’s.
Why?
An ache began in the center of Trent’s being, and spread like a mushroom cloud of longing and poison. His son. A boy he’d never seen growing up. A man he couldn’t hope to reach at this late date. The need to drive back to Weddington Farms, to see this young man with his own eyes, to hear his voice—the need was so powerful it hurt clear to the ends of his fingers.
Harper had robbed him of so much.
How could he fo
rgive her? How could he forget?
DILLON AND ANGIE hadn’t been able to resume their interrupted conversation. Neighbors had dropped by after dinner Saturday night. By the time they left, Angie and Christine had already gone to bed.
But the biggest reason was Harper. She had been acting downright peculiar ever since they got back from Charleston. She would sit in silence for long periods of time, seemingly unaware when people spoke to her. When she did talk, she left half her sentences unfinished. She was in a fog and showed no signs of coming out.
Floretha, who had also been gone for the day, didn’t know what was wrong. Dillon thought he’d solved the mystery when Shep told him a man had stopped by Saturday afternoon. Dillon wondered if it was Bill Mott with bad news, but Harper assured him she had talked to the Clover banker by phone and things looked promising.
What with worrying about his mother and a small emergency at the farm, it was Sunday afternoon before Dillon found himself alone with Angie again.
Actually, they weren’t alone. They were leaning against the fence watching Christine ride Eddie around the jumping ring. Dillon had had to practically restrain Angie from saddling up and joining his daughter. It made him wonder if Angie could ever love him more than she loved her horses.
Because he was convinced she did love him. She had to know he’d been on the verge of asking her to marry him last night She’d seemed as disappointed as he when they’d had to go inside. As long as he didn’t think about the farm, he had no question in his own mind that his feelings were strong and clear.
He was about to broach the subject again when he noticed a silver Rolls-Royce coming down the lane toward the barn.
“Who could that be?” he muttered.
Christine rode up to the fence. “Did you see me?” she asked. “I didn’t miss a jump.”
“We saw,” Dillon said, turning back to his daughter. “Why don’t you ask Angie if it’s time to raise the jumps?”
“Not yet,” Angie said. “Give it a few more days and—”.
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