“So you were afraid to come back,” Ginny said. “Afraid if you came to see her again, that other shoe would fall. You’d find out she had abandoned you, just as everybody else in your life had.”
“My grandmother never would have done that.”
“Logically you knew that, but logic isn’t always what drives us, is it? And actually, in a way she did abandon you. She died. Whether it was her fault or not, one day she just wasn’t there for you anymore.”
Cole was suddenly caught in a whirlwind of memories. His grandmother in her kitchen, feeding him, talking to him, pretending whatever reprimand he’d gotten at school that day was water under the bridge. And then that awful day years later when Murphy had called to tell him she’d had a stroke. He remembered driving ninety miles an hour on I-20, trying to get to the hospital, only to find her dead by the time he got there. And there was Murphy, staring at him accusingly, as though somehow it had been his fault.
After the funeral came the will. He hadn’t understood a bit of that, why his grandmother had done what she’d done, and his confusion had made him so defensive that when he finally left town, he and Murphy had been only one angry remark away from an all-out brawl.
He remembered everything that had happened. What he’d hidden away was how he’d felt about it, that gut-wrenching sensation of being alone in the world again. Somehow he’d shut all that out, but here it was again, and it just about tore him apart.
“I was seven years old when my mother left,” he told Ginny, feeling as if he were in a daze, as if somebody’s else’s words were coming out of his mouth. “I got home from school one day and nobody was there. I sat there crying for two hours until my father got home. He searched their bedroom, realized she was gone, then came into the kitchen and told me to stop crying, that we were better off without her. Then he pulled a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet, got drunk and passed out. I never saw my mother again.”
He glanced at Ginny and saw tears in her eyes. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want sympathy. He just wanted…
Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted. He pulled Ginny into his arms. He had the most irrational feeling that as long as he held her, the pain might go away. She rested her palm against his chest under the blankets, moving her thumb back and forth in calm, soothing strokes.
“My grandmother,” he whispered. “I never told her I loved her.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ginny said. “I have a feeling she always knew.”
Cole rose on one elbow and stared at Ginny, holding on to a tiny shred of hope that maybe she was right. He slipped his hand behind her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair, then drew her close for a long, lingering kiss.
He felt his body stir, and he couldn’t believe that so soon after making love he was ready to do it again. As he took Ginny into his arms, he had loose, fragmented thoughts of how warm she felt against him, how soft and enticing she was and how he’d come to depend on her so much. And somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind he saw a dim light, a faint beacon calling him to a place he’d never been before.
Tell her. Tell her you love her.
The words swirled around inside his head, floating like an apparition but never quite taking hold. He’d felt bits and pieces of them for a long time, always shoving them to the back of his mind, but still they were there—in every stolen glance, in every moment of silent togetherness, in every satisfied sigh in the dark.
He’d told himself for a long time that his relationship with Ginny was just sex, that in the end it was no more permanent than it had been with any other woman he’d held in his arms. But later as they lay together, totally exhausted and on the very edge of sleep, the words came to him again.
Tell her you love her.
No. It was just an illusion. A dream. He was dreaming about a forever kind of love like a man dying of thirst dreams of water. He wants it so desperately that when he sees a mirage in the distance, he crawls toward it, filled with hope, only to have those hopes shatter when he finally reaches it and realizes it was never real in the first place. And Cole knew he’d rather die of thirst than risk touching that mirage only to pull his hand back to find nothing but sand slipping through his fingers.
THE NEXT MORNING they headed back to the ranch. Cole was quiet all the way home, as he had been all morning, and Ginny knew he was thinking about last night. She’d made him face some things he hadn’t wanted to, and she wasn’t completely sure he was happy about it.
Maybe she’d pushed him too hard, but it was so easy to see how much he was hurting and how badly he needed to talk about it. If she had known he was going to give her the cold shoulder, though, she wasn’t sure she would have said anything, no matter how much he needed to talk. Maybe it was selfish, but she wanted nothing to get in the way of them enjoying every minute of the time they had left together.
In the tent last night, she’d asked him about Sunday because she really did want the horse, but deep down she’d also wanted to make absolutely sure his plans to sell the ranch still stood. They did. He’d made it clear from the beginning they’d be splitting up in six months. She’d even signed a contract that said so. So why was she despondent now?
Because you love him.
She had to get that out of her mind. She might be in love with him, but he’d made it clear she was nothing more than a stopover for him. He would be moving on again. She felt a little choked up at the thought of that, then chastised herself. What had she expected, anyway? That he would fall madly in love with her and want to be with her forever?
After they arrived home and he still seemed withdrawn, Ginny wondered if she should say something to him—ask him what was wrong, apologize for coming on so strong last night—something. But in the end she said nothing, and by the time they sat down that afternoon to watch football, he seemed to have come back to life a little bit, and she decided he needed a little time to let it all soak in.
He got up during halftime, leaving Ginny sitting on the sofa, and a minute later she heard him call to her from the bedroom. She went to the doorway to find him sitting on the bed, his back to her.
“Yes?”
“Come over here.”
She walked to the bed.
“Sit down.”
His voice was cold. Commanding. She sat down beside him, and for the first time she realized he was holding something.
Her pill case.
For a moment, Ginny couldn’t breathe. It had been here all weekend. She’d forgotten to take it with her.
“According to this,” Cole said, “you’ve missed two days. Is that right?”
“I—I guess I have,” she murmured. She swallowed hard. “What if—”
“No,” Cole said. “Don’t even think it.”
“It’s…possible.”
Cole let out a harsh breath, then tossed the pills on the nightstand. “I can’t believe you forgot!”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Sorry? You’re sorry? Is that all you can say?”
Ginny flinched, tears coming to her eyes.
“A week and a half away,” he muttered. “A week and a half…”
A week and a half. He was talking about the rest of their time together as if he was on the verge of being released from prison, only to be looking at the possibility of getting stuck with a life sentence.
He stood up and strode to the dresser, then turned back, a strange glint in his eyes. “Are you sure you just forgot?”
Ginny blinked. “What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying.”
When it finally dawned on her what he meant, she was so startled that for a moment she couldn’t speak.
“I would never—” She took a deep, angry breath. “You know I would never do that to you!”
“Do I? Twenty-five thousand dollars is one thing, Ginny. Half of this ranch is another thing entirely.”
Ginny was so flabbergasted she barely knew what to say. “You think I’m trying to t
rap you into staying married?”
He looked at her coldly. “You wouldn’t be the first one to try it.”
How could he say these things to her? How? After everything they’d meant to each other?
Or maybe she’d just imagined that. His face was so cold and dark she felt as if she were looking at a stranger.
“I—I can’t believe you’re saying these things.”
“And I can’t believe I bought all that talk about your being so afraid of getting pregnant. If you’d been so afraid, Ginny, you wouldn’t have forgotten.”
“But I did forget! They were here in the bedroom because I took them every evening when I went to bed so I wouldn’t forget, but when I was getting ready to go camping, all my other stuff was in the bathroom, and…and I just forgot!”
“And you’re telling me that for two days you didn’t even think about it?”
She hadn’t. Not once. She’d been having such a wonderful time, in an atmosphere so different from home, that she just hadn’t remembered until the moment she looked down and saw him holding the pills.
“Maybe you didn’t read the fine print in our prenuptial agreement. Under no circumstances are you entitled to one dime from the proceeds of the sale of this ranch.”
She was horrified. “Is that what you think? That I want your money?”
“Sure you do. Twenty-five thousand dollars at the very least.”
“You can keep your twenty-five thousand dollars!”
“Oh, I can? Well, if you don’t want that, then what do you want?”
He glared at her, challenging her, daring her to spell out her real motives. He had absolutely no idea what she was thinking, what she’d been thinking for weeks now, what she’d been dying to tell him but just hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it.
“You, Cole. That’s what I want.”
The truth. She whispered it so softly that the words were barely audible. She hadn’t completely crystallized it in her mind until this very moment, until the prospect of tomorrow without him became so painfully real.
“It’s all I’ve wanted for the longest time. Just you.”
His face remained impassive. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m not buying that. The average woman has her eyes on my wallet from day one and never lets it out of her sight.”
“That’s because the average woman isn’t in love with you.”
The air between them became deathly still. For the count of three, neither of them spoke, and just for a moment, his expression betrayed him. She saw a light in his eyes, an opening, a way to reach inside him. But just as quickly his expression hardened again, his face shrouded in cynicism.
“So you’re in love with me,” he said with a small, humorless laugh. “I guess you haven’t been paying attention, have you? We’ve been stuck together in this one-horse town for so long that you’ve forgotten who I really am. I’m the guy who talked you into marriage for his own financial gain. I’m the guy most people think just might be guilty of arson. I’m the guy who thinks nothing of having a different woman in his bed every night. Now, maybe I’ve put all that aside for a while, but in the long run, it’s who I am, and if you’re smart, you’ll never forget that.”
Ginny tried hard not to cry, but tears welled in her eyes. She felt dizzy, as if she couldn’t get enough air to breathe, as if the bedroom were rocking back and forth. This wasn’t the Cole she knew. Why was he acting like this? Why? They’d been so close, and now…
That was it.
All at once she remembered everything he’d said last night in the tent, and the answer came to her in a rush of understanding.
For weeks now, as he’d grown closer and closer to her, sharing things with her he’d never shared with anyone else, making love with her, knowing she cared about him…
He’d been waiting for the other shoe to fall.
He’d trusted her. For one of the few times in his life, he’d given a piece of his heart away, and right now he was absolutely certain she’d taken advantage of that. Even if she hadn’t this time, it was inevitable, so he figured he might as well end it now. And in the event she actually was so misguided to think she might be in love with him, he’d reminded her of what a rotten person he was so there was no way she could ever have that misconception again.
“But don’t worry,” Cole added. “If you’re pregnant, I’ll take legal responsibility. You’ll have all the financial support you need.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “So we’re back to money again?”
“It’s what makes the world go around.”
“Tell me, Cole. If your father had given you money, would that have been enough?”
Cole’s eyes grew cold and bitter. He turned and headed for the bedroom door.
“Cole?”
He turned back.
“If you were looking for an excuse to drive me away, this one was as good as any, wasn’t it?”
“It’s over, Ginny. In a week and a half, we’ll be divorced. You’ll go your way, and I’ll go mine. And that’ll be that.”
16
TWO HOURS LATER, Ginny sat at Rhonda’s kitchen table, tissues close at hand. Two suitcases sat next to the refrigerator. They contained everything she’d been able to stuff inside them on short notice.
After Cole had left the house, she’d felt so lost and alone she called Rhonda, who had offered to let her stay with her as long as she needed to. Ginny was thankful for that, because she knew she couldn’t look at the accusation in Cole’s eyes anymore. As misguided as he was, still he believed she’d betrayed him, and nothing would ever change his mind.
She’d told Rhonda everything, from the night at the Lone Wolf to her encounter with Cole in the bedroom today and everything in between.
“Please don’t say anything about this to anyone else,” she begged Rhonda once the story was told. “Murphy doesn’t want anyone to know about the will, and—and I don’t want anyone to know about it, either.”
“You know you can trust me, Ginny. I won’t say anything to anyone. I swear I won’t.”
Ginny put her hand to her abdomen. Rhonda had called a clinic to find out how far along she had to be before a pregnancy test would be accurate, and they told her to come in in a week to ten days. The odds were probably against it, but what if it really were true? She already knew how Cole felt about it. He’d give her money for support. Nothing more. But he’d never promised himself. Not in any way. Not from the first time she’d made this deal with him until this very minute. And if she’d ever thought otherwise, she’d been sadly mistaken.
“Cole will take responsibility, won’t he?” Rhonda asked.
“Oh, yeah. No problem. He said he’d give me all the money I need.”
Ginny buried her face in her hands and the tears came again. Rhonda patted her arm. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
There was one part of her story she’d left out, though it appeared Rhonda had already guessed the essence of it anyway—the part where she’d told Cole she loved him.
Why had she done that? Why? Now, for the rest of her life, she would look back on the moment and feel humiliated, always seeing that look in his eyes that said she was some kind of deluded little fool.
She wanted so desperately to make him believe she hadn’t betrayed him, but she knew how hopeless that would be. He’d grown up in a situation where everyone he’d ever loved turned their backs on him. By the time he found his grandmother, he was so emotionally fragile he couldn’t even tell her he loved her. And now ten more years had hardened him into a man nobody could touch.
Not even Ginny.
WHEN COLE returned to the house three hours later, Ginny was gone.
He came into the kitchen. Total silence, except for the wall clock ticking. He saw a note on the table.
I’ll be at Rhonda’s. Ginny.
He supposed she’d done that so he wouldn’t worry about her.
He tossed the note on the table and sank into a kitchen chair. He’d been so angry when he lef
t the house he’d wanted desperately to hit something. Instead he’d taken his anger out on the accelerator of his car, and right now he considered himself lucky he hadn’t wrapped his car around a tree.
But, no, he’d managed to get home in one piece. As if anyone gave a damn.
He sat in the kitchen for several minutes, the only sound that infernal clock ticking. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he got up, pulled it off the wall, yanked the battery out of it and tossed both the battery and the clock in the trash can. Then he returned to the table and wished he’d left it ticking.
The silence was worse.
She told me she loved me.
Love. The most meaningless word in the English language. Of course she would tell him that—she wanted his money. Any woman would when the payoff was that big. And what was a little pregnancy, too, compared to that kind of loot?
It had been a mirage, after all. A bone-dry handful of sand.
He didn’t feel angry anymore. He just felt numb. He knew this kitchen had once been filled with warmth and laughter, but for the life of him, he couldn’t feel it now. He tried to remember what it had been like to kiss Ginny, to hear her voice, to feel her body beneath his, to hear her crying out with pleasure, but it was as if his entire nervous system had shut down, leaving him feeling…nothing.
It was just as well, because the woman he’d felt something for had tried to use him, maybe even worse than he’d used her. He laughed a little at that, a harsh, hollow laugh that sounded empty to his ears.
Somehow he would get through this next week and a half. Then he would put the ranch on the market, hit I-20 and head to Dallas. With luck he would never have to set foot in Coldwater, Texas, again.
IT TOOK Murphy two days to realize something was up.
Cole showed up at the barn one morning and was met with the old man’s stony stare.
“Where’s Ginny?”
Cole heaved a bale of hay into the breezeway of the barn, wishing Murphy would go away and leave him alone. That’s all he wanted. Just to be left alone.
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