“Chaney girl,” he growled.
“Yes, Jed,” she whispered close to his ear.
Jed was lost. His body moved on pure instinct and need until he heard her call his name one last time.
Chaney wondered if her breathing would ever settle into a normal rhythm again. Never, even when she was young and loved him, had the sex ever been like this.
For several long minutes, they lay there falling slowly back to earth. That was the only way she could describe it. She certainly hadn’t been earthbound when they came at the same time. That had been amazing.
Now will you admit you love him?
The annoying question from her conscience ruined the moment.
“What’s wrong?”
Chaney opened her eyes to find Jed staring down at her, concern furrowing his brow. He must have felt the tension her inner debate had brought with it. She was supposed to be comforting him, not the other way around.
“Nothing,” she said offering a smile. “What could possibly be wrong after that?”
The ploy didn’t work. She felt him pull away not just physically, but emotionally as well. Even telling herself that was a good thing, a pain speared through her chest. Though he was levering himself off her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him back.
“Don’t go yet,” she whispered.
For a moment, he held himself stiffly above her. Chaney forced herself to hold his confused gaze. After what seemed forever, he relaxed his stiff arm and rolled them over. Chaney happily rested her head on his chest. She had to admit she enjoyed listening to his strong heartbeat. He lay with one hand behind his head and the other absently stroking her back. She relaxed, really relaxed for the first time in weeks. She didn’t say anything for a while not wanting to disturb the rare peace between them.
How long they remained that way, Chaney couldn’t be sure because she fell asleep. When she woke up, she found herself wrapped in a cocoon called Jed. One of his arms wrapped around her upper body and one leg covered her lower half. His breathing told her he wasn’t asleep. He had simply moved to keep the chill from her when she fell asleep. Her heart’s fortification weakened a little more with the consideration.
Why couldn’t he remain the bastard he’d been when he left her years ago? Damn it.
“The storm has moved on,” he said.
Of course, he knew she was awake. He knew every time her awareness changed. “We should probably get dressed and head back before Martha sends out a search party.”
The thumb he had been stroking on her shoulder stopped at her words. A moment later, he lifted his arm as if opening a door to let her off the cot. Chaney knew she should take the opportunity. She turned instead so they faced each other.
His gaze met hers, but she couldn’t read it. No hint as to his thoughts showed in the beautiful blue pools that she could see clearly, now that the sun had returned. She lifted a hand to his jaw.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine. You?”
“Talk to me, Jed.”
He pulled her hand from his face, kissed it, and then levered himself over her and off the cot without saying a word. She watched him walk across the room to his clothes. Okay, well, she wasn’t going to stay naked and talk while he got dressed. She sat up and started gathering her things. With the sun shining through the windows she didn’t want to chance him seeing the ugly scars on her leg from her surgery.
“What did I do?” she asked, while hooking her bra.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “If you don’t know what we just did, I don’t think I can explain it.”
Rolling her eyes, she prayed for patience as she pulled on her jeans. “I know what we did, I meant what did I do or say just now to shut you down? You know Martha will be worried about us. Yes, I do mean us. I didn’t mean anything else.”
He had finished dressing and moved on to tending the stove. “I didn’t say you did.”
“But?” If she said more, she knew she would regret it.
Jed picked up her shirt, shook it out, and walked over to her. “But nothing. You’re right. Martha will worry. We should head back. I shouldn’t have come out in the first place. I have orders I should be working on.”
When he started to turn away again, Chaney grabbed his arm. “Damn it, Jed, just tell me what I did.”
She held his gaze watching it go from frustration to anger to resignation. She didn’t really like any of them, but the resignation really bothered her. Why, she wasn’t quite sure.
“Okay, you want me to talk? Here it is.” He pulled his arm out of her grasp. Glaring down into her eyes, he crossed his arms in front of him. “You came out here because you felt sorry for me.”
“Because I was worried about you,” Chaney corrected him.
“I thought you wanted me to talk.”
Chaney got the feeling he was spoiling for a fight. Normally she would comply, but not this time. She nodded to let him know she would listen.
“Like your refusal when I offer anything to help with the ranch, I don’t want or need your pity when it comes to my daughter. I appreciate you being kind to her while she was here, but she’s gone, you can stop pretending you care. Though this little interlude was more than fantastic, it was only pity sex. I was hurting and I took it. However, that doesn’t change anything. You don’t want to want me. I get it.”
Shocked at his words, Chaney stared with burning eyes. Pity sex? That’s what he thought?
Well?
Damn she hated her sarcastic conscience. She clenched her jaw before she said something she would truly regret. She’d be damned before she gave him the satisfaction of knowing how much his opinions hurt.
“Okay, I guess we understand each other,” she said, gathering the steel mesh around her heart again. She walked around him and opened the door. “Let’s see if the horses are still here.”
Jed let Chaney take the lead on their ride back. Watching her ramrod straight posture told him what a bastard he had been. He told himself he had tried to reason with her before all the vitreous words had poured out of his mouth, but she wouldn’t leave it alone. Typical Chaney, never take the easy way. Still, he shouldn’t have said those horrible things to her.
Pity sex? Really?
It had felt like a lot of things, but pity wasn’t one of them. Memories, possibilities, hope even, but with her one comment about needing to get back, he had erased all of those thoughts from his mind. It was as if the spigot from a barrel of black sludge opened and poured every painful, ugly feeling he had ever known into him.
In the end, she agreed with you.
Jed almost pulled the horse to a stop in surprise at the support rather than the usual sarcastic turn of his conscience. She had agreed. Hadn’t argued even one point. So why should he feel like a heel? Obviously, he wasn’t good enough for her.
All the resentment he’d held concerning the ranch returned with a vengeance, and with that, his earlier anger. To hell with being civil. He would stand by his agreement to help her keep her damned ranch, as he knew she would help him with custody, but anything more? Nope. He had lied to himself long enough. No matter what he did, she would never love him again. It was time he accepted that fact and moved on.
As they reached the barn, he knew he had to put distance between them. If he didn’t, he might say something that would push her into dropping their agreement despite the cost to her. He couldn’t risk his one chance at winning custody.
He dismounted and handed the reins to the stable boy who had helped him earlier. Chaney stood nearby having already given her reins to another hand. She expected him to go in and see Martha with her, but he knew he couldn’t.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” he said before heading for his shop and some serious thinking time.
He stepped inside the old barn and closed the door. For several minutes, he stood in the dark. The only light came from cracks between boards he hadn’t repaired yet. Calm settled over him as it always d
id when he was in a woodshop. The smells of sawdust and tool oil were an enticing perfume to him, an aroma that brought his traitorous mind back to focus on his wife.
Although he’d never had a shop this big to work in when living with his uncle, Jed had managed to turn a small rundown shed into a workable area. With every penny he earned at odd jobs, he bought tools for his passion. Whenever he could steal some time away from chores, he would go to the shed and work. Only one other person had a key and he would often find her there.
Closing his eyes Jed could still picture Chaney on an old stool by the workbench running a cloth over his tools. He took good care of his tools so it wasn’t necessary, but it was something she enjoyed doing. That was how tool oil had become such an intoxicating scent for him. It would get in her hair or her shirt and mix with the fresh soft woman scent that was Chaney’s alone. He could still remember burying his face in her hair and inhaling deeply.
Whoa, boy. Unless you plan on making a time machine chances of that happening again are nil. Didn’t you just tell yourself it was over?
Reality slapping him in the face was nothing new for Jed. That’s how it always happened. Smack, your parents are dead. Smack, if you don’t leave town I’ll have you arrested. Smack, your wife’s having an affair. Smack, you’ve lost custody. Wham, you’re married again but your wife hates you.
“Damn it!” His fist connected with the wall before he pushed away and stalked over to his workbench. Work would force his concentration elsewhere. He focused on the wood that had arrived then looked over several orders he had received in the mail.
Choosing the most difficult piece possible Jed set to work. It was hot in the old barn but he didn’t even turn on a fan. His plan was to sweat out the anger and self-pity coursing through him.
Several hours later he heard the door creak open and sunlight burst into the dust-filled air. He turned, expecting Martha with a water jug. It wasn’t Martha.
It was Chaney.
A pale, worried Chaney.
“Jed.” Her voice was high and nervous. “It’s Dale.”
***
Chaney sat quietly watching Jed pace the length of the waiting room. Every gesture she made to support or comfort ran smack into a brick wall. A brick wall she had built.
She had shut him down every single time he tried to build any kind of relationship. Even when Ashley had been around Chaney had been on guard. She’d known that to let down her guard would allow the little girl into her heart. If that happened then it would be twice as painful when the year was over and Chaney walked away. Having lived through the pain of losing both Jed and their child once, she feared she wouldn’t survive the double whammy a second time. It had to be on her terms this time.
Lifting her gaze to him, her heart clenched. He looked so lost. So alone. “Jed?”
“Where the hell is Steve?” he asked, whipping around and pinning her with a glare.
“He’s on his way. He was in court.”
“Where were the hands when this happened? Why was Dale out there doing all the work? That’s what he pays them for.”
“Jed, it was a heart attack.”
“I know what it was! He’s working too hard, doing too much. Doing things Steve should be taking care of.”
Chaney just stared at him. This was so unlike Jed. He was definitely a do-your-own thing kind of man. He was the one who had encouraged Steve to go to law school.
“Steve isn’t a rancher, you know that.”
“What does that have to do with anything? That’s his father dying in there. He should be doing everything in his power to take care of him.”
Geez, Chaney you are sooooo dense. Jed is reliving the death of his father.
“Jed,” she said standing and walking over to him. She placed her hand on his tense arm. “Dale is going to be okay. You heard the doctor. They’re running tests to find out the extent of the damage, and setting his arm. You’re not going to lose him.”
His eyes bore into hers for a moment before he broke both eye contact and the physical contact of her hand. He turned and stared down the hall where they’d taken his uncle an hour ago. “He’s not mine to lose.”
Chaney wanted to cry for the lost little boy inside him. The evenness of his voice, the stiff straight posture, belied the truth. He was terrified of losing his uncle and being alone again.
The contradiction of his fear and his usual attitude of not needing anyone surprised her. She had felt the same surprise when she found out about his plan to fight for custody of Ash. This was not the Jed who had thrown her love back in her face and walked away without a glance.
No, this was the Jed who had spent hours sitting silently, brooding. The boy who had let her read the stories he painstakingly hid from everyone else and the boy who had looked into her eyes and touched her soul.
This was the side of Jed she couldn’t trust.
Steve and Belle burst into the waiting area. “Jed, how’s dad?”
“Alive.”
Chaney sent him a scathing look.
“He’s going to be fine, Steve,” she said, clasping Steve’s nervous hands. “They said it was a minor attack, more of a warning. The ranch hands acted quickly getting him help and he’ll be okay. The doctors are running some tests to find out what the damage is and how to treat him. He broke his arm falling off the horse, but it wasn’t too bad.”
“I told him he needed to cut back.”
“You should have done more than tell him. You should have been out there making sure he did.”
Chaney was shocked at Jed’s attack on Steve. Before she could step in Steve threw his own stones.
“Like you? At least I’ve been here to help. I didn’t run away.” Steve’s accusing tone and face-off stance only served to fuel Jed’s anger.
“I didn’t run away. I was run off. But this isn’t about me. We’re talking about your father,” he said poking a finger at Steve’s shoulder. Then his voice lowered to that deceptively quiet tone that had sent Billy Bradley off the dance floor three weeks ago. “Mine’s already dead, remember?”
Chaney’s heart must have hit the floor. It certainly wasn’t beating in her chest. Never in all the time they spent together as kids and young adults had she realized the devastation Jed felt from his loss. The silence in the room was deafening. It seemed as if they were all in a cocoon and the outside noises couldn’t reach them.
Then she saw the doctor walking toward them. The same doctor who had set her leg after the accident that took her baby. “Dr. Peterman.” She stepped forward and offered her hand.
His gaze roamed her face thoughtfully and Chaney knew he recognized her. She prayed he didn’t say anything about the past. “Miss McBride.”
“Sampson. I’m married to Dale Sampson’s nephew. How’s Dale doing?” Before Chaney finished speaking, the others surrounded them.
“The good news is Mr. Sampson’s break was worse than his heart attack. He’ll be in a cast for at least two months and then need physical therapy, but I believe it will heal well.” He grinned at Chaney. “Almost as well as you did.”
Chaney felt Jed’s gaze turn toward her but refused to let the focus of the conversation shift. “What about his heart?”
“That isn’t my specialty, but from the information I was given before setting his arm, it looks to be more of a warning. They are still waiting on test results to be sure, but the cardiologist will tell you more shortly.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Chaney said, as he left to tend to other business.
The release of tension from both Jed and Steve was visible. Their shoulder muscles physically sagged. Belle wrapped Steve in a hug as tears of relief trailed down her pretty face. Chaney reached for Jed. He stepped away avoiding her touch.
“I’ll go take care of things at the ranch. You stay with Dale,” he said to Steve then walked down the hall without a word to her.
Chaney debated for a few seconds whether to follow him or not. If she stayed, she would need a rid
e home later. The inconvenience seemed too much to ask with everything Steve had been through already today. She followed Jed.
He was already turning the key in the ignition when Chaney opened the passenger door and climbed in the truck. His gaze swung toward her but he didn’t say a word. Taking his silence as acceptance Chaney buckled up.
The ride to Dale’s ranch passed in record time, and without a word spoken. When the truck stopped, Chaney expected Jed to continue in the same vein by getting out quickly and avoiding her as much as possible. Instead, he remained behind the wheel with the ignition running. Leaning forward his arms crossed on the wheel he gazed out the window.
Chaney had watched him from the corner of her eye during the drive. Tension had begun to drain from him. She’d seen resolve take hold as his posture straightened and the clenching of his jaw released. She remembered the behavior well. It was the precursor to Jed announcing what he was going to do. It only appeared when he felt obligated to do something he didn’t really want to do. For all his wild, rebellious ways as a young man, he’d always been responsible. Well, except for leaving her without a word, but that probably had more to do with her than him. She definitely wasn’t in the same league as his ex-wife.
“Go home, Chaney,” Jed said, breaking into her self-recrimination, as he climbed down from the truck cab.
Startled by his voice first and his words second it took Chaney a moment to argue the dismissal.
“I’ll help you get things settled here then--”
“No.” His tone was firm as his eyes focused the full force of his gaze on her.
His eyes were not a warm sky blue. They were a cold icy blue Chaney had never seen. A cold so intense it sent a chill over her that the ninety-degree temperature couldn’t burn away. “Jed, I--”
“You wanted distance, you’ve got it. Dale’s heart attack is the answer to your prayers. You’ll have my name but won’t have to have me around. People won’t think anything of me staying here with Dale laid-up. Have Martha gather my things. I’ll have one of the hands come pick them up later.” He slammed the door and stalked away.
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