He knew exactly how Christine felt.
Apparently happy knowing that all the adults in her world were present and accounted for, Christine took her place in the line and rode into the ring. Dillon and Angie hurried to seats reserved for parents of participants.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t get my message,” Dillon said, watching Angie rather than his daughter as Christine trotted Eddie around the ring. “How have you been? I was worried when you didn’t call.”
She looked up at him, her eyes still uncertain. “Dad and I had a lot of things to talk about. I had things to work out in my own mind.”
“Did you get everything settled?”
“Some.” Angie looked up at him. “Too much depends on other people.”
“Would I be one of those people?”
“Yes.”
“Would it make any difference if I told you I want you to marry me?”
Angie didn’t reply right away. The children had finished putting their mounts through their gaits, and the audience was applauding. Then she spoke in a half whisper. “It might”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you the night we got back from Charleston. I’m sorry I let all that other stuff get in the way.”
The talking and movement among the spectators began to die down. The children had started the dressage events, a complicated series of steps and maneuvers using leg and hand signals. This required a lot of concentration. The crowd grew silent. Dillon wished Angie would look at him instead of Christine. It wasn’t easy asking a woman to marry you when you weren’t sure you had her attention.
“Look at me,” he whispered.
“I promised Christine I’d watch everything she did so we could talk about it later.”
“She doesn’t care about anything except the jumps.”
“Maybe, but dressage is important. It develops control and communication with the horse.”
“But I’m trying to communicate with you, not the damned horses,” Dillon growled.
“Bad timing.”
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You could start by telling me whether you love me.
“Answer him,” an elderly woman in front of them said. “You’ve got me curious now.”
Angie turned white. Dillon turned red. It was Mrs. Anthony, his eleventh grade United States history teacher. She must be at least seventy by now.
“Yes, I love you,” Angie whispered in Dillon’s ear. “Now be quiet and watch Christine.”
“What did she say?” Mrs. Anthony asked. “I’m hard of hearing.”
Dillon grinned and moved a little closer to Angie. “She said she loves me.”
“Good,” said the elderly lady. “I think young people ought to be in love. It gives them something to do.”
Dillon took Angie’s hand in his. She pulled back at first, then gave in and leaned against him. He felt almost like a teenager sitting next to his girl, so nervous about what she was going to say he could hardly manage to put intelligent sentences together.
“Things are going to change, Dillon,” Angie said. “I love my stepfather and don’t intend to choose between people I love.”
“You think that’s what I’m asking you to do?”
“All of us are too tightly bound together to be able to live with anger and dislike. If you want me, you’ll have to accept my stepfather—your father. If I want you, I have to accept what Harper meant to Trent all those years he was married to my mother. There’s no other way.”
“But that has nothing to do with the way we feel,” Dillon said. “I love you. I want to marry you.”
“I know.” Angie turned back to the ring. People were applauding as the dressage events concluded. The jumping events were up next.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“No, but there are a lot of questions you’ve got to answer for yourself before I can say anything else.”
“Like what?”
“There’s still the problem of the farm—what to do if Harper sells, what to do if she doesn’t, what you’ll do if Harper and Trent decide to resume their friendship.”
The idea startled him. “What the hell makes you think that’s going to happen?”
She looked at him and shook her head, then ignored his question. “Most important is what kind of relationship you’ll have with my stepfather if you and I marry.”
“Who says I have to have any kind of relationship with him?”
“He’s my stepfather, Dillon. You’ve got to make up your mind about Trent. Not because of me or him, but for yourself.”
“And after I’ve done all these things?”
“I want to marry you, Dillon. I think I fell in love with you almost immediately. It’s a shocking admission for a woman who prides herself on studying every situation thoroughly before making a decision. But I can’t marry you as long as you’re at war with yourself. You’d soon be at war with me. I couldn’t endure that.”
“You listen to her,” Mrs. Anthony advised Dillon. “She sounds remarkably sensible for someone so young.”
Dillon wondered if he might not wake up and find this was all a dream. He almost hoped so. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined asking the woman he loved to marry him while watching his daughter jumping her pony and receiving advice and promptings from his high school teacher.
He wondered what Mrs. Anthony must think. And what the town would say when they discovered that Trent was his father, that Kenneth Winthrop had never existed, that they had been forced to swallow a lie because Sam Weddington had been the richest man in town. Tongues would wag for years. If he couldn’t stand the whispers and stares, he’d have to leave town.
But he didn’t want to move. For better or worse, Collins was his home. He meant to do everything he could to stay here for the rest of his life. He also meant to do everything he could to make sure Angie married him. He didn’t need Mrs. Anthony to tell him she was a smart woman. He knew that. He also knew there was a whole lot he liked about her that had nothing to do with her brain.
Then he saw Trent. He stood on the other side of the ring, alone. Dillon tensed.
“I see you’ve found him,” Angie said, her voice edgy.
“Did you know he was coming?” Dillon asked, unable to keep the animosity out of his voice. He could hardly believe Trent had the nerve to show up.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? She’s my daughter.”
“She’s his granddaughter, whether you like it or not. Besides, where he goes is none of your business. Or mine. That’s one of the things I had to get straight. I had a lot of anger that wasn’t doing anybody any good. I’ll always regret things didn’t happen differently, but I’m not angry anymore.”
“Well I’m more than angry,” Dillon said, raising his voice to be heard over a burst of applause.
“Then you’ve got to come to some decisions about my stepfather before you can talk about forming any new relationships.”
Then she stood and walked away. He called after her, but she acted as if she didn’t hear him. “Angie! What the hell does that mean?”
Mrs. Anthony turned around to face him. “She means she’s not going to marry you until you make up your mind she’s more important than your anger. You’re a smart boy, Dillon Winthrop,” she said in the same tone of voice she had used to address him twelve years earlier, “but you still haven’t learned not to waste your energy on anger.”
Angie had walked to Trent’s side. Dillon watched, filled with rage, as she gave her stepfather a hug.
He cursed his temper and the anger that still clung to him like a burr.
HARPER WAS KNEADING dough when Floretha came through from the front of the house. She never had learned to cook, but from time to time she coerced Floretha into giving her another chance. This particular Saturday, weeks after all the turmoil had begun, seemed like the perfect day to pound dough.
&nb
sp; Floretha threw a kitchen towel at her.
“The South has more chance of rising again than that dough,” she said. “Wipe yourself off, girl. There’s a good-looking man coming to the door and I don’t want him getting the wrong impression about my child. He might think he’s found himself a woman who can cook, and I wouldn’t want to be accused of misleading anybody.”
Harper’s hands grew still. “Who?”
Floretha gave her a look. Harper picked up the towel and began wiping the flour off her hands and wrists.
“You’ve got some on your face,” Floretha said, and Harper shooed her away.
“I don’t care,” she said. “He can see me just the way I am.”
Floretha smiled. “I believe he always did.”
Tears sprang to Harper’s eyes, something that happened entirely too much lately. She put her arms around the narrow, stooped shoulders and said, “Floretha, what in the world am I going to do?”
The old woman squeezed her back, then looked her squarely in the eye, straightening her hair and brushing the flour off her face as she did so. “You’re a wise, grown-up lady now. You’ll figure it out.”
“But I’m not,” she whispered, looking toward the front of the house and the sound of the heavy brass knocker on the door. “I’m not.”
“Go,” Floretha said. “I’m too old to be running back and forth.”
Harper started toward the door slowly, but was almost running by the time she got there. What if he left? Gave up and drove away? She flung the door open and found herself too breathless to greet him.
He was too handsome for words. He had been a good-looking boy, of course, if you could overlook his cynical grin and his tough-guy swagger. But the years had turned a rough-edged country boy into a self-assured, suave gentleman, even in a pair of charcoal jeans and a striped, button-down shirt that had clearly been demoted from dress-up status to weekend wear. The faint lines marking the corners of his eyes and the striking silver of his hair gave him the look of a man who had lived thoroughly and had stories to tell.
Harper’s blood rushed, set her to tingling.
“You came back,” she said. “I…I called for you, but you’d already checked out.”
He nodded. “I had things to take care of in Charlotte. And…things to sort through.”
“I understand.”
“Anyway, it was such a pretty day, I thought you might want to take a ride. No, wait, that’s not it I wanted you to ride up to Charlotte with me. See where I live. Have some lunch. What do you say?”
She looked down at her own jeans and Dillon’s well-worn sweatshirt, with sleeves she’d torn off at the elbows when he outgrew it. “I think I’d better change.”
He grabbed her hand. “Don’t. I like you that way.”
She touched her face, remembered she had no makeup, and felt a pinprick of regret for what the years had done to her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Come with me.”
So she did. They spent the day in Charlotte, where he had a spacious condo in a 1920s converted apartment building a few blocks from downtown. A music festival had taken over the streets of town, and they wandered through the crowds, listening to bluegrass bands and watching street clowns and arguing over which type of music was more authentically American. She saw his office and met his best friends, a married couple who lived in the condo next door. They held hands and they kissed in the middle of the street while a small group of college kids who had more beer in their bloodstream than common sense cheered and hooted.
They went back to his condo after the sun went down and called to let Floretha know Harper wouldn’t be home.
And they made slow, easy love that was richer and deeper for all the lost years.
“Thank you for coming with me today,” he whispered in the dark, his fingertips brushing the side of her breast.
She moved her head to feel the smoothness of his chest as it grazed her cheek. She shifted to wrap her leg around one of his and marveled at the way she felt. The way they felt together.
“Thank you for giving me another chance,” she murmured. “This is another chance, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want another chance, Harper. I want a sure thing.”
And because she didn’t know what to say to that, she raised herself to his lips and kissed him with all the sweet hope of a girl coming to her first lover.
They spent Sunday together, too. They went to his church, then took a picnic to Freedom Park and sat on the banks of the lake. By late afternoon, Harper felt as if she had been at his side throughout his life, and the way he looked at her said he felt much the same.
“What’s going to happen now?” he said as he turned down the lane toward Weddington Farms at the end of the day.
“What do you want to happen?” she asked, not even afraid of the answer.
“I want us to be together. The way it always should have been.”
“But we aren’t the only ones we need to think about,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t resist for long if he persisted. “There’s Angie. There’s Dillon. There’s whatever is going on between the two of them.”
“I hope they’ll be smarter than we were,” he said. “But whatever they decide, you and I have to focus on what’s right for us. We’ve wasted too much time already. I don’t want to waste any more, Harper.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, taking the hand he offered. “Neither do I.”
As he pulled to a stop in front of the house, the front door opened. Dillon strode down the steps and started toward them.
“Do you want me to talk to him?” Trent asked.
Harper shook her head. “Not now. He’s angry, and there’s no point in trying to get him to listen when he’s like this. Let him simmer down. Then we’ll talk to him.”
Instead of kissing her goodbye under the stern glare of their son, Trent squeezed her hand. She got out of the car and waved as he drove off. Then she turned to face Dillon’s fury.
“What do you think you’re doing, going off with that man?” Dillon demanded.
“I’m sorry this is making you miserable,” she said, walking past her son toward the house, “but I’m a grown woman.”
Dillon turned and followed her. “You can’t expect me to accept it.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You and everyone else. You know Angie’s upset, don’t you? Hell, everything’s such a damned mess!”
Harper paused at the top of the steps. She closed her eyes, feeling her peace of mind slip away.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Mom?” His tone was more entreating, less censuring. “You can’t erase the past twenty-nine years. You know that, don’t you?”
Harper turned and looked at her son. His back sagged, his head hung. His misery touched her and she went to him and put her arm around his waist. She felt him stiffen, then put his arm around her shoulder and hug her to him.
“I love you, Dillon,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry for all the mistakes I’ve made and what those mistakes have done to you. I hope you’ll come to believe how deeply I mean that.”
He hugged her a little harder.
“But I have to take this second chance life is offering me. And I hope you won’t turn your back on yours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
TRENT WAS WHISTLING when his office door burst open. He’d spent two evenings this week with Harper and had the promise of the weekend ahead with her, planning their future. He looked up from the report on his desk as his office door banged into the wall.
It didn’t surprise him to see Dillon striding toward him. In fact, it pleased him. It also pleased him that Dillon hadn’t felt the need to dress up to confront his father on his own turf—he wore clean jeans and a chambray shirt, with work boots that still had a little mud caked on the toe. Good for him. The hostile expression on the young man’s face even gave Trent some satisfaction. His son wasn’t one to roll over and play dead. He liked that.
“Welcome to AllStates Financial,” he said, standing but not holding out a hand. He doubted Dillon was in the mood for a friendly shake.
“I want you to stay away from my daughter,” Dillon began without preamble. “She doesn’t need you showing up at her competitions or at the house, bringing her presents, making her think you’re going to be around all the time.”
Trent decided to counter the aggressive anger in his son’s voice with as much calmness as he could summon. “I’d like to be around for her. As much as you’ll let me.”
“And I want you to stay away from my mother.”
“I can understand your feeling that way.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m six years old. I don’t need placating. Just stay the hell away from my family. I know you had your reasons for leaving, but that doesn’t change anything now.”
Despite the unpleasantness of Dillon’s ultimatums, Trent found his heart swelling with pride in this young man who was so determined to protect his territory. Even against a man as rich and powerful as himself. Dillon showed no fear, just determination. He had to remember to tell Harper what a fine job she’d done bringing up their son.
“I do respect your wishes, Dillon. I’ll stay away from Christine if you insist, but I hope you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t”
“But Harper is another matter. Seeing her is something that’s between her and me.”
“You broke her heart once. Now you’ve turned our lives upside down. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“I know you’re angry. You have every right to be.”
“You’re damned right I do!”
“But I’m going to do everything I can to change that. You’re my son, and I’ll be sorry as long as I live that I’ve missed so much of your life.”
“It’s too late to change things now,” Dillon said, turning to leave.
“It’s never too late, Dillon. But you and I aren’t the ones who are important here,” Trent continued, hoping to stop his son before he reached the door. “Harper is. And Angie.”
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