by Julia London
Jake, on the other hand, was not enjoying himself quite so much. In part because he was inexperienced, but also because they had saddled up old Belle for him, a mean old mare who was one step away from becoming a bottle of Elmer’s Glue. Belle was supposedly managable, a prime consideration as far as Jake was concerned. Only Belle did not like to be ridden, and she made that very clear the moment Jake sat on her back.
Naturally, being 110 percent male, Jake refused any help from Rebecca and insisted on trying to persuade Belle to trot around the paddock. Belle was having none of it; she danced and tried to switch him off with her tail. Then she began side shuffling, trying to rock him off. But Jake held fast.
Robin and Rebecca exchanged looks, both stifling a laugh, watching as Jake desperately held on to the old girl. Finally, in a fit of frustration, Belle did the unthinkable—she bucked. Having no clue it was coming or how to hold on, Jake went toppling off her like Humpty Dumpty, landing squarely on his butt. Robin shrieked and tried to climb over the rail; Rebecca went rushing over to help him up, and Cole laughed hysterically from atop his horse.
Jake was up before Rebecca could even reach him, waving her off. “I’m fine,” he said cheerfully. “But I’m going to kill that old nag,” he said and went striding forward, prepared to do battle.
Jake won.
Belle was riding beneath him after another hotly contested match between the two, and even looked a little happy. As for Jake, well, the Cheshire cat had nothing on him. That was so like Jake, Robin thought—when life kicked him in the teeth, he got up, brushed himself off, and went at it again. She so admired that about him.
Rebecca next took them out of the paddock and into the adjoining pasture. Robin watched from atop the railing. She turned when she heard the sound of an approaching golf cart, thinking it was Mom. But it was Dad, wearing a safari hat, khaki pants, and Maui Jim sunglasses.
He stopped the cart and got out, walking carefully in a sort of lopsided way to where she was sitting.
“Hey Dad, how are you today?”
“A little green.”
“Jeez, shouldn’t you be feeling a little better now?”
“You’d think,” he said and draped his arms over the railing.
“What if it doesn’t get better? Will you go back to New York?”
Dad sighed, adjusted his hat. “I don’t know. Your mom has some eastern doctor lined up. They do some mumbo-jumbo deal where they supposedly treat the whole you, and cure the cancer while they’re at it. I figure it’s worth a shot at this point.”
The sound of dejection in his voice was heartbreaking. “Don’t give up, Dad,” she muttered helplessly.
He squinted up at her on the rail and reached out, covering her hand with his. “I’m not going to give up, baby girl. I’m going to fight this with everything I have. I have too much left to do.” He patted her hand, shifted his gaze back to the riders again. “I just hope you don’t make it any harder on me,” he said, his hand slipping away from hers.
“How would I make it harder?”
“I want to talk to you about this guy.”
Robin’s gut contracted; she steeled herself against his assault. How strange, she thought, that her body seemed to react defensively so naturally. But then, Dad had never been an easy man to deal with. She had been steeling herself against one thing or another for as long as she could remember, and swallowed down a lump now. “What about him?”
“He’s not right for you.”
No surprise there. They’d had this conversation a dozen times in her life about a dozen different guys. “Dad . . . you don’t even know him.”
“Oh yes, I do—I know what kind of guy he is. I know what he wants.”
“No, you don’t—”
“Robin, don’t be foolish,” he said angrily. “That man is after your money, sure as I am standing here.”
“Don’t insult me,” she said, just as angrily, and jumped off the fence. “Do you think I am so stupid I don’t know when someone is trying to take advantage of me?”
“In a word? Yes.”
“Oh, thanks a million, Dad. Nice vote of confidence. Again.”
“For God’s sake, Robbie,” he said, his voice a little gentler, “I’m not saying you are stupid. But you have a tendency to think with your heart, not your mind. Anyway, I don’t know why you’d be interested in a guy like him when you have someone like Evan Iverson wanting you.”
“Oh my God. I don’t want to be with Evan! He’s your choice, not mine. You told me to make my own way, Dad, and that is what I am doing.”
“I told you to take some time to discover what is important in life, to stop and smell the roses. I did not tell you to take up with some broke handyman!”
“Well pardon me—I didn’t understand that I had to with who you chose. For some asinine reason I thought that for once in my life, at least this choice would be mine!”
“Robin,” he said, gripping the rail, “the Lear name is a powerful one. There is an awful lot of money tied up behind that name. I will be damned if I am going to see you robbed blind because you got the hots for some construction worker.”
Furious anger blinded her. No matter how much she tried to care for this man, he seemed to knock her down at every opportunity, and Robin had had enough. He might be a powerful man, but he was a prick. And Jake—well, regardless of who he was or where he came from, Jake would never do that to her. Jake would hold her up on a pedestal, treat her with respect. Maybe that was what she had been searching for. Respect. Acceptance. She suddenly realized that was worth far more to her than her father’s money.
Robin squeezed through the railing, started walking toward the Jeep.
“Wait a minute! Where are you going?” Dad demanded.
“Home! I’ve had enough of your criticism, Dad. I’m not your window dressing anymore! I am not going to be some doll you can pose however you want!”
“Robin Elaine, stop right where you are!” he bellowed.
She stopped. Debated. And slowly turned around. Over Dad’s shoulder, she could see the three riders had come to a halt, too, were looking back at her and Dad. “If you walk out of here with that man, you can kiss your inheritance good-bye. I’m not playing around here. You go, and that’s final.”
He might as well have kicked her in the gut. Every word snatched her breath like a sucker punch. What had she done? Fallen in love? That was her crime? The very idea, the very thought that she might give up everything the Lear name brought her because she loved . . . loved (it was love, wasn’t it?) was unbelievable. And strangely liberating.
She stared at her father, keenly aware that for the first time in her life, she was going to do what she wanted to do and not try to please a father who could not be pleased. She smiled. “Okay, Dad, have it your way. You keep it, every last cent. I don’t want as much as a dime. You want me to make my way in this world? Then I’ll do start at the very bottom if I have to, because there is nothing you can say, no threat you can make to force me to give him up. Buy yourself another ornament.”
With that, she turned on her heel and went striding to the house to pack her things, almost laughing at the sound of her father calling her back.
Aaron watched his oldest child leave from the windows of the master suite, wondering if the nausea he felt this time was from the drugs or from losing her. Stubborn little fool. Yeah, but she’d come back. She always did. She’d say, I was wrong, Dad, you were right. Stubborn, but able to own up to it when she was wrong. And she was wrong about this, dead wrong.
She’d come back.
He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
As the Mercedes rounded the corner up the drive in a cloud of caliche dust, a door slammed behind him.
“You asshole. You never change, do you?” Bonnie seethed.
Aaron winced, turned halfway to look at her. She was standing in the foyer of the master suite, her legs apart, her hands braced against her hips. He could almost see the steam coming out of her
ears and fire out of her nose.
“How . . . dare you?” she barely managed to get out.
“How dare I? How dare I try and help my daughter with my last dying breath?”
“I am not going to stand here and listen to your dying bullshit,” she said and marched forward to the dresser, yanked open the top drawer, and started jerking out various articles of underclothes, tossing them on the bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked, gingerly lowering himself to a chair.
“Leaving.”
A flame of panic raced up his spine. “You can’t leave—”
“Like hell I can’t.”
“Bonnie, for Chrissakes, stop it!” he said sternly, but she stared fiercely at him, daring him to try to stop her before she turned on her heel and marched to the closet. Aaron struggled to his feet. “So you’re just going to march out of here because Robin doesn’t like what I told her?” he asked incredulously.
Bonnie stopped what she was doing, slowly turned to look at him, and he was shocked to see that she was crying, tears streaming down her face. “How dare you judge that man, Aaron? He is kind, he is considerate, he is . . . is obviously and wildly in love with our daughter! What do you find so objectionable?”
“I don’t find anything about him—he’s not even worth my consideration. Evan is a much better choice for her—”
“She didn’t choose Evan!” Bonnie cried to the ceiling. “Why can’t you get that through your head? She loves Jake! God, Aaron, when are you going to learn? She did what you told her, she went her own way, and you still manage to find fault. You can’t let go of their lives, why should you expect them to do for themselves? To live for themselves?”
Aaron shook his head, sighed heavily. “Bon-bon, he doesn’t have the means—”
“What means? Money? Is that the yardstick by which you measure everything? Well, you have money, Aaron, and it hasn’t made you a better person.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“It means,” she said, swiping angrily at the tears on her cheeks, “that you were that young man once. You didn’t have a dime to your name when you asked me to go to Dallas with you. My father despised you for it, remember? But you promised me—” A sob choked her; she looked helplessly at the ceiling. “You promised me what you didn’t have in money you would make up in love, tenfold. You promised.”
Aaron sank helplessly onto the massive four-poster bed, staring at Bonnie, rudely reminded of a vow he hadn’t thought of in years. But oh God, but he remembered it now, just as clearly as if he had made it yesterday. The two of them, lying on a quilt in the backyard of that little house, looking up at the stars. You see those stars, Bon-bon? I love you all the way to those stars and back. Look up there and see how high we can dream. . . . “I gave you everything,” he said, knowing the moment the words escaped his mouth how empty they were.
Bonnie looked at him with an expression so hurtful that he inwardly cringed.
She pulled a bag out of the closet, stuffed several things into it, and as Aaron watched, picked it up and walked to the door.
“Don’t go, Bonnie, please! I need you,” he said helplessly.
Bonnie paused, her hand on the doorknob. “I know, Aaron,” she said. “And the sad thing is, I need you, too. I always have. But you haven’t changed and . . . and I tried, I really did. But I just can’t do this.”
And she walked out the door, leaving him on the edge of the bed, another wave of nausea filling his throat, mixing with the acrid taste of his tears.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The drive from Comfort to Houston was interminably long and silent. From the back seat of Robin’s Mercedes, Cole attempted to talk about the weekend, particularly the horses and Rebecca, but didn’t get much response from the front seat where Robin and Jake rode in frosty silence. He finally gave up and popped his Walkman on his head.
The frostiness stemmed from an argument Jake and Robin had over leaving in the first place. Robin had expected Jake to be outraged at her father with her, but instead he surprised her by urging her to stay, to work things out with her dad. “He’s a sick man. He’s got a lot on his mind.”
“He’s sick all right,” she’d muttered. She wanted to leave right away, to go home to her empty house and her empty life and just sleep because she was so damn exhausted from a lifetime of trying to please her father.
“He just wants what is best for you, baby—you can’t fault him for that,” Jake continued as Robin angrily stuffed her bag.
“He doesn’t know what is best for me!” she snapped. “He doesn’t know me at all! I’m just another fixture to him, like a car or a boat—”
She broke off, tears welling in her eyes again. Jake came up behind her, slipped his hand around her stomach and pulled her back into his chest. “He’s right, you know. Not about my being after your money, I don’t mean that. But he’s right that I can’t provide for you in the same way he has. At least not yet, and maybe never. He knows that, and you’re his daughter. He wants the very best for you. I would, too, if I were in his shoes.”
“God, Jake,” she said, wrenching free of his arm, “you can’t seem to get it through your head that I don’t need anyone to provide for me!”
“Oh, really? So you are willing to give up all this?” Jake asked, sweeping his arm to the house around him. “You’ve lived in the lap of luxury for a very long time. Do you think you can just turn your back on it? Because that is what you are about to do.”
“Stop,” she said, choking on a sob. “Stop defending him. Stop pretending that money is so important.”
“Stop pretending that it’s not,” he quietly countered.
Robin sniffed, wiped her nose with a used tissue, then methodically finished packing her bag while Jake watched. When she finished, she hoisted it over her shoulder. “Are you coming?” she asked, looking at the door.
They left before the dinner hour with only Rebecca on hand to say good-bye. Dad was who knew where and Mom was furious with Robin for leaving. Rebecca’s expression was grim; she hugged Robin tightly to her, said she would call her later. “He’s a pain in the ass, I know, Robbie. But he doesn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Huh—that’s strange, because he’s an expert at it.”
“Just get some space and think about it,” Rebecca said, then turned a kind smile to Jake. “It was really nice to get to meet you.” Robin had the distinct impression Rebecca did not think she would ever see him again. She leaned over, waved at Cole in the back seat. “Take care of yourself, Cole!”
“Say bye to Frannie for me!” he called, his young mind still on horses.
As they drove away—Jake insisted on driving, which left Robin to stare morosely out the window at the ranch house—Robin half expected, half hoped Dad would come out on the veranda and wave.
He did not.
She tried to grapple with the myriad emotions that besieged her as they sped down I-10. Anger, frustration—a hurt so deep that she felt like she was drowning in it. A sharply real, palpable fear that she would never see her father again, that he would die despising her. With her forehead against the cool glass of the window, and Jake’s comforting hand on her knee, Robin tried to make sense of it all. Not that there was any hope of that, how could there be? Her father’s constant criticism was so unfair—she had never, in a long and prominent line of boyfriends, had a serious, heartfelt relationship with anyone. Never. And now that she did (she did, didn’t she?), it was with the wrong man? Jake’s life was so far beneath the lofty Lears’ as to make him untrustworthy? And why hadn’t she ever noticed how harshly her father judged everyone?
Maybe because she did the same thing? God, was she like him? Robin stole a glance at Jake from the corner of her eye and had a startling, sickening thought—maybe she was just like her father. Maybe she couldn’t separate a man’s essence from his circumstance. It wasn’t like she had given Jake the benefit of the doubt when she first met him. Had it not been
for his good looks, she probably never would have spoken to him. She probably would not have looked at him at all until she wrote him a check, and only then to see if he was scamming her. The rest of the time she would have looked right past him, just like Mia looked right past him and Lucy and everyone else she met that did not travel in their elite social circles.
But maybe, just maybe, Robin thought hopefully, she was selling herself short. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone so far as to disrespect him like Dad did. Maybe she would at least have respected him. Funny, wasn’t it, that now she adored him? Yes, but . . . did she adore him enough to walk away from the Lears? Did she love him? Really, even the word sounded fragile. Okay, so what if she admitted that she did love him—not that she was ready to admit such a huge thing—but what if? What would happen in two, three, even ten years’ time? Would she grow bored of him? Would he still love her? Or would he, like her own father, grow to despise her? And if he did, where would that leave her? Completely alone?
Like she wasn’t already completely alone. Like she had some rich, full life to be envied. What a fucking joke.
Robin was really beginning to despise herself and what she had become, was really beginning to believe that what she had been searching for all this time was not a thing, but maybe something as simple as herself. It almost felt like there was a person, the real Robin, a better Robin, lying beneath a shroud of privilege and the Lear name. Still very much alive, but buried by the weight of her name.
“Hey, baby,” Jake said, interrupting her thoughts with a gentle squeeze of her knee. Robin glanced up, realized they were almost to Houston. She pushed herself out of her slump, stole a glimpse over her shoulder. Cole was stretched across the backseat, asleep.